


Be Gay, Do Crimes

by anamnesisUnending, Leicy_Kyle



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Friendship, Gen, Heist fic, Peter Nureyev being a sad lonely gay, Pre-Canon, Trust Issues, and is also about to rob, and projecting his desperate desire to be happy and loved onto a guy he speaks to once, but actually more, debatably Peter Nureyev/Original male character - Freeform, you know how it is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-18
Updated: 2019-02-18
Packaged: 2019-10-31 02:12:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 28,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17840441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anamnesisUnending/pseuds/anamnesisUnending, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leicy_Kyle/pseuds/Leicy_Kyle
Summary: It’s been three years since Peter Nureyev left Brahma and his past behind forever. Three years of running, of hiding in the shadows, and three years of following the careers of the greatest thieves in the Outer Rim. Lately that’s meant following Buddy and Vespa--literally. And he hasn't escaped their notice.When they ask him to work with them he certainly can't refuse, but he soon finds the job isn't exactly what it seems, and their partnership will be complicated by secrets, both theirs and his own.--Written for the 2019 Penumbra Podcast Minibang, with art by my amazing partner Leicy!!





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Admittedly the title is a bit too chipper for the tone of this fic, but I couldn't bring myself to change it and no one else would let me. My roommate also suggested as a title "The Rihanna and Beyonce of Crime Invite Me To Pull A Heist With Them: A Self-Insert Fanfic by Peter Nureyev"
> 
> Big shout out to everyone in the minibang discord server for all your support in the long process of writing this!

Before Peter Nureyev was the son of a revolutionary who never existed, before he was the son of a thief who built him up with lies, before his name was a threat held over a floating city, he was a pickpocket, nothing more. His name, Peter Nureyev, was worth as little as the petty scraps he stole to survive. It’s good, he thinks, to return to his roots. It’s good to know he can survive on his own, bring his life back into his own hands, hold it safe in the sleight of his quick fingers. It’s good to know he isn’t just what Mag made him into, that who he was before wasn’t lost beneath all the lies and the “first rules of thieving.” And it’s good to be nameless.

 

And, god, it’s so _easy_ now. Peter remembers, growing up, how the wealthy would cling tight to their riches, purses clutched in curled claws and jewelry hidden under their crisply tailored clothing. How they would walk faster to pass him by, eyes cast anywhere but the dirty faces of Brahma’s street rats and beggars. He remembers the ones who would deign to show a guilty grimace as they hurried by, and the ones who would sneer at him without a trace of pity.

 

Here, the wealthy flaunt their riches, and none of them would even dream that the poor pickpocket they guarded themselves against on the street dances among them, cloaked in their own shining garb. They put on quite a show, all these celebrities and nobles, heiresses and executives. Every person present and every wall of the ballroom is draped in jewelry and art, gilded and glimmering in the lights cast from floating diamond chandeliers. The music hangs light and airy and always changing, never ending, a flawless construct without room for human error. The food, too, is exquisite, ingredients imported fresh even across the light years from where they were grown on Earth, and prepared by private chefs that half the attendees even at this garish occasion couldn’t afford. And of course, ferried around the ballroom by android waiters--the hosts would never tolerate the presence of common people at this event. Peter mourns the easy disguise that would have been as he plucks an appetizer from a silver platter.

 

“Thank you,” he says softly to the faceless android, attracting a mocking laugh from some shiny CEO beside him.

 

“The thing’s not sentient, you know,” the man says, at the same time that a robotic voice states, “Your gratitude is appreciated.”

 

Peter smiles to himself, not quite as smugly as he wants to, and says, “Well, it wouldn’t do to forget my manners, would it?” He offers up his hand to shake. “Indigo Viceroy. And you might be?”

 

Indigo makes a point of only really speaking about himself. After all, Peter doesn’t want the man’s name. He’s much more interested in the gold watch he slips from his wrist when the man takes his hand, and no one would suspect someone so self-absorbed to take any interest in them, or their possessions. He makes conversation long enough to relieve him of his ruby cufflinks, three gold rings, and his wallet, and hopes when he leaves that the name he chose tonight is just ostentatious enough to be forgettable. It’s a troublesome balance, trying to remain inconspicuous among the deliberately conspicuous. Nothing he has to worry about when he’s posing as waitstaff.

 

Still, the trouble will be worth it soon enough. As impressive as this party is, Peter is still waiting on the real show to start. He’s been chasing it long enough that he can recognize the more subtle cues now; across the room, just a minute ago, he saw a security guard whisper something to the host. _Just a minor abnormality in the system, should be fixed in a moment._ Then there was the slightest shift of lighting as the shielding mechanisms outside the windows all turned on. Soon the power will cut out, just for a moment. Peter wants to be up to the second floor balcony before that happens—the view from there will be much better—but he can’t move too urgently through the crowd. Indigo Viceroy is a conspicuous alias, and too much is at risk if Peter gets caught.

 

Peter counts the seconds as he weaves his way towards the staircase, allowing himself to be stopped ever so briefly along his way by smiling strangers and the treasures they carry. The clock in his head is ticking down faster than he’d like, so clasps the hand of his latest victim apologetically and excuses himself. He’s barely finished scaling the stairs when the power finally cuts. Seven seconds earlier than he anticipated.

 

Instantly he whips around and clings to the railing of the balcony, eyes sweeping over the room as panicked screams and whispers rise up from the crowd below. He wonders how they’ll make their entrance tonight.

 

This is the eleventh heist in eight months he’s followed them to, just to watch, to learn how the greatest thieves on the Outer Rim do their work. No matter how many times he sees it, it never gets any less spectacular.

 

He’s busy scanning the crowd for anything out of the ordinary when it happens. There’s a sound as loud as thunder, and as high and bright as chimes. His eyes catch on a piece of glass halfway through its descent, and his gaze rises to the ceiling, once a shining glass dome, now shattered into millions of confetti-like pieces raining down into the ballroom. Through that shattered wreck drop Buddy and Vespa, Vespa and Buddy—the bane of law enforcement across the Outer Rim.

 

They land in the center of the room with impossible lightness, as if they’d fallen from only one foot up instead of fifty. Vespa vanishes in a cloud of smoke as soon as she lands, disappearing into the shadows or the crowd, but Buddy stays center stage, arms outspread to the sky as though the last few pieces of falling glass are only gentle snowflakes to her. She cuts a stunning figure, her dress embroidered every inch with shining gold detailing, with red, feathery plumes cascading down the skirt from her hips to the floor. And she laughs, quietly, but still the sound reaches his ears because the whole of the crowd has fallen silent and still in inexplicable awe and terror. She is the whole of their focus, and Peter’s as well.

 

In fact, he’s so enraptured by the scene that he doesn’t notice the silent form creeping up behind him until they’re right up against him. One arm wrapping around his chest, trapping his arms at his sides, they haul him back away from the railing and into the empty shadows. He doesn’t cry out, but he tries for a second to wrest himself from their grip, when his attacker’s other arm comes up and a knife flicks open at his throat. His momentum carries him for just a moment too long, bring his skin flush against the blade, and an impossibly small noise flees his throat as he feels the knife slice into him.

 

His attacker tightens their arm around his chest, and then, in a low growl, says, “Keep quiet and don’t move.”

 

He drags in a slow, ragged breath, and tries to keep his heart from rattling out of his chest. It’s clear the second he hears that voice who his attacker is. “Vespa?” he says, awestruck.

 

“The hell do you think ‘keep quiet’ means?” she says.

 

“I—“ he’s caught between compliance and apology, catching the words in his throat. Slowly, the well at the cut in his neck spills over, and he feels a droplet of blood run cold as it rolls down to stain the crisp ivory collar of his shirt. The feeling of it sends a chill through him, clears his head for the first time since the ceiling shattered above him. He’s been caught. He’s in danger. He needs to disappear.

 

And still, his heart flutters when Vespa speaks to him again. “You and I are getting out of here. I just need you to tell me, when we go, who’s going to come looking for you?”

 

The question catches Peter off guard, more than anything else about this. It’s so alien to him that he doesn’t even begin to formulate an answer until Vespa snarls impatiently, “Well?”

 

“No one,” he stammers.

 

Vespa taps the flat of the blade against his neck and says, “If you’re lying, I’m making it your problem.”

 

“I’m not, I sw—”

 

“Hush.” Vespa drops the arm around his chest, instead grabbing him by the shoulder and shepherding him towards a high, arching set of glass doors that opens onto a balcony outside. Vespa’s hold on him shifts once they’re stopped in front of the door, just enough for him to feel her have to lean around him to get a clear look at its locking mechanism. She keeps the blade pressed a hair’s breadth from his throat all the while, offering no chance for a quick escape.

 

“Hands on the door, keep them where I can see them,” she says.

 

Peter obediently lays his hands against the cold glass. Still apparently dissatisfied, Vespa digs her elbow down into his shoulder, forcing him to drop down to one knee, and then crouch lower still as she leans over him. It’s odd, he realizes, pressed up as close to her as he is—for a figure so much larger than life, Vespa is a remarkably small woman.

 

There’s a high, electric buzzing sound as Vespa presses something against the lock. A spark and a burning smell, and then the blue glow fades as the shielding shuts off.

 

Vespa pushes him through the doors, out onto the balcony, and into the cold night air. Out here, he can hear sirens in the distance. Vespa draws in a sharp breath, grips his arm tight with the hand that’s not at his throat. But that can’t be right, because there’s no way they could be heading here already. His comms had stopped working as soon as the lights had cut—they were using a signal jammer.

 

“Damn it this is too soon,” she mutters under her breath.

 

Peter studies the streets, looking for the telltale flashing of red and blue, and he sees it, maybe ten blocks away. They’re coming closer, but— “It’s an ambulance,” he says. “They’re not coming here.”

 

“I wasn’t talking to you,” Vespa snaps, but loosens her grip on his arm nevertheless. “Wasn’t talking to anyone, just… talking to myself again.” She takes a slow breath, and Peter can practically hear her gritting her teeth.

 

Another moment passes. Peter tries not to shiver from the cold, and the fear, and the excitement, and then a sleek black car pulls up in front of the balcony with a sharp gust of wind. The driver’s side door flies open and Peter locks eyes with _Buddy Aurinko_. She shines him a smile, bright and soft and deadly all at once, an expression he’s practiced in front of a mirror a thousand times and never perfected. It leaves him breathless.

 

“Oh lovely, you found him,” she says, stepping out of the car. “Vespa, would you care to introduce us?”

 

“Not really. Let’s get out of here,” Vespa says. She lets go of him, drops the knife at his throat for the first time and climbs into the driver’s seat.

 

Buddy opens the door to the back seat and gestures for Peter to get in. “You heard her, darling.”

 

Peter can feel a blush creeping up his face, can barely stop staring—wide eyed, jaw dropped, stunned that Buddy Aurinko is even looking at him, much less speaking to him. Then she shifts her skirt, and he sees a blaster holstered at her thigh, and a piercing look in her eyes tells him not to keep them waiting.

 

As he gets into the car he realizes that brief moment might have been his only real chance for escape. With Vespa momentarily out of the way, maybe he could have pulled a knife on Buddy before she had a chance to reach for that blaster. Maybe he could have dropped down from the balcony and made a break for it. It’s too late now though, with Buddy sliding into the car next to him and pulling the door shut behind her.

 

The car takes off with a jolt. Buddy looks at Peter, her eyes appraising, calculating. Then she turns to Vespa. “He’s bleeding.”

 

“I told him not to move, it’s not my fault he didn’t listen,” she grumbles, but her hand is fishing something from a pocket, and a second later she’s passing back a bandaid and a sealed antiseptic wipe. Buddy takes Vespa’s hand before she takes what’s offered in it. Presses a kiss to Vespa’s knuckles and looks up into the rearview mirror to see a softened smile grace her lips.

 

“Do me a favor and clean that up, will you?” Buddy asks Peter, passing him the bandaid and wipe. “I try not to leave too much blood at a crime scene when I can help it.”

 

Peter stares down at her hands, not taking the supplies. “Where are you taking me?”

 

“That depends. I’m sure I’ll have made up my mind by the time we get there. Now, who are you?”

 

“I—“

 

“I did ask you to clean that up, didn’t I?” Buddy pushes the medical supplies into Peter’s hand, along with a small hand mirror.

 

Peter flicks the mirror open and sees Indigo Viceroy’s reflection. There’s something reassuring about that, at least—remembering that the mask is still on. Indigo Viceroy is more a piece of art than a person, and he likes it that way. Glitter and dark asymmetrical patterns sprawl out from his eye makeup, not quite enough to fool facial recognition if a camera catches full view of his face, but he’s gotten smarter at avoiding them these past couple years, so it’s enough to do the job. A deep purple hue paints his lips, albeit a bit smudged; he fixes that quickly before he even thinks about the wound on his neck. Indigo is vain above all else. He’s also, unfortunately, utterly useless here, a flimsy construction not made for anything more than being charming and distracting the rich while he robs them blind. It doesn’t take much, really.

 

He flits his eyes back up to Buddy before dealing with the cut on his neck, her gaze steady and dissatisfied and dangerous.

 

“If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not say,” Peter says as he cleans up the wound.

 

Buddy’s lips curl into a cold smile, unfazed by his refusal to answer. “Emile Lord, was it? A waiter at the Alshain Bistro on Váli? And then it was Jason Viscount at the bank on Ymir. Razia Baron, Adrien Charlemagne, Hyacinth Archon, Peleus Vidame… am I missing any?”

 

Peter tries to appear unmoved, but he can feel the blood draining from his face. “I’m sorry, you must be confusing me with someone else. Several someones else, it seems.”

 

Buddy carries on as if he’d never spoken. “It’s impressive, really. Resumes, job applications, financial transactions, even family histories, for some of them. There’s a remarkable amount of information available, considering none of them even exist. Of course what makes it so difficult to track them down is the face. Terribly camera-shy, all of them.”

 

“Not everyone can achieve your level of celebrity status, Ms. Aurinko,” he says. It doesn’t come out sounding nearly as confident and composed as he’d like it to.

 

“And it seems you don’t particularly want to,” Buddy continues. “So. What is it that you want?”

 

Peter almost laughs at the simplicity of the question. What does he want? He’d wanted a chance to see his idols in action. Talking to them, being in this car with them, it’s at once more than he ever dreamed of and utterly terrifying. But instead of saying as much, he just smiles and says, “Your autograph?”

 

Buddy’s gaze darkens. There was an air of levity about her than Peter hadn’t entirely noticed until it disappeared. Now, she speaks with a burning severity, “I’m not here to play games, darling. You’ve been following us for months. If you won’t tell us why, then you can at least tell us where to mail your corpse so Dark Matters or whoever it is you’re working with can find it.”

 

Peter’s breath catches in his throat, and not in the awed, starstruck way that being this close to Buddy and Vespa does to him.

 

“ _Dark Matters_ is after you?” he says. Nothing he’s seen at any of their jobs has suggested Dark Matters’ involvement, but then, how would he know? He’s inexperienced enough that Dark Matters has only ever been a rumor to him, a frightening bedtime story to remind him to never get caught, to keep getting better. Even Mag had never run into them in his lifetime. If he had— well, maybe then Peter wouldn’t have his blood on his hands.

 

But Peter’s fine. Peter doesn’t need him. Peter did what he had to, and he can handle this on his own, can handle anything on his own, even Dark Matters, if need be.

 

But if anything might have caught their attention, Peter suspects, New Kinshasa would have beat out anything Buddy and Vespa had done.

 

His racing mind snaps back to Buddy when she speaks. “They could be,” she says, almost flippantly. It’s distressingly unhelpful. “You said it yourself, Vespa and I have quite a reputation.”

 

Peter purses his lips, tries to dig deeper. “But do you have any evidence? Besides me?”

 

“That’s nothing you need to worry about,” Buddy deflects.

 

This is getting him nowhere. Better, then, to just deal with the immediate issue at hand. “Why, because I’m going to be dead before I get a chance to find out?”

 

Buddy laughs. “Oh don’t be so crass, dear. Only if you don’t cooperate. So I’d suggest you start answering my questions soon. Starting with this one: who are you?” She leans in a little closer—almost imperceptibly—as she says that, like all she really wants is to get to know him, and all the threatening manner about her dissipates. He can see in that moment, in spite of all the fear she strikes into the heart of the galaxy, why she’s just as good a con woman as she is a robber.

 

But Peter doesn’t have the privilege of being known, with all the secrets he keeps. So he’ll only give away half the mystery. He does the first thing he can think to do and reaches into his pockets, grabbing handfuls of jewelry and spilling them out onto the seat between himself and Buddy. “This is all I was here for,” he says. “Picking pockets and enjoying the privilege of witnessing two of the greatest thieves in the galaxy.”

 

He frowns at the small collection of his spoils, and keeps rummaging through his pockets for more—wallets and watches and rings. There are other little bits of ephemera that make their way into the pile as well—a small knife disguised as a key. Tickets to an opera neither he nor the original ticket-holder ever saw. A pen he slipped into his pocket at a hotel several days ago, the end of it somewhat mangled where he’d been absently chewing on it. An engraved, silver teaspoon from some fancy cafe he’d been to. A couple of souvenir keychains with names on them—Lucius, Amal, Cassiopeia, _Peter_ ; his pulse quickens at that one. He doesn’t remember stealing the keychains at all, and he hastily shoves them and as many of the other objects as he can back into his pockets.

 

Buddy just watches it all pile up with an amused smile.

 

“ _Well._ ” She raises an eyebrow and picks up a gold necklace fashioned like the branches of a tree, and heavy-laden with rubies the size of cherries. “I suppose that’s one way to answer. Best thieves in the galaxy, what do you think of that, Vespa?”

 

Buddy turns away from Peter and leans forward, reaching around the seat in front of her to drum her fingers against Vespa’s shoulder.

 

“I think flattery’s not gonna get him anywhere,” Vespa says.

 

“Oh but isn’t it nice to be admired?” Buddy says.

 

“Sure, if he wasn’t stalking us too,” Vespa says.

 

Buddy leans back again and rolls her eyes fondly. Addressing Peter again, she says, “I assume I won’t be getting a name along with this answer?”

 

“That depends on what you’re willing to believe.”

 

“Very little, from your mouth, unfortunately. How about your latest alias, at least? It’s not polite, you know, giving a lady nothing to call you.”

 

“You seem to be managing quite fine. But if you insist, tonight I’m Indigo Viceroy.”

 

Buddy laughs at that. “Well, that does sound about right for the company you’ve been keeping. Any of them would overlook a forged invitation if the name on it was flashy enough.”

 

Peter knows that it’s safest to let people underestimate him, but it seems that modesty is a harder skill to cultivate than subtlety, so he corrects her. “The invitation wasn’t forged at all. Just the identity.”

 

And that seems to pique Buddy’s interest even more. “Oh? Then Indigo Viceroy must have friends in some very high places.”

 

Peter grins. “He knows how to make them. All it takes is saying the right words to the right people; half the time I don’t even need the forged ID.”

 

“And when you do?”

 

Peter reaches into the inner pocket of his blazer. He only keeps one thing there; anything marked with his face is too dangerous to risk losing. He hands a slim booklet to Buddy—Indigo Viceroy’s interplanetary passport.

 

Buddy flicks through the pages, examining each one quickly and methodically. She pays special attention to the careful inking of the watermarks, the texture of the laminate, the precise lines of coding that will insert his identity into citizens databases.

 

Instead of addressing Peter again, Buddy says to Vespa, “You’ll want to see this.”

 

Vespa tenses. “You’re getting an idea, aren’t you.”

 

“It would be a shame to see such immaculate work wasted on a job like this. Forsetti, Vespa. I think—”

 

“Do you, Bud? Because _I_ think this job deserves a lot more consideration than a stranger’s forgery portfolio.”

 

“That’s not a no.”

 

Vespa sighs.

 

Peter furrows his brow, looking between the two, utterly excluded from this particular discussion.

 

“We’ll talk about it,” Vespa says.

 

“That’s all I ask.” Buddy turns her attention back to Peter. “You seem quite confident. How about this: you’re breaking into a building with only one ground floor entrance. In order to get in, you need a retina scan, fingerprint identification, and an authorized key card. The card’s codes shift every day, updated to the next day’s codes only when you leave the day before. Security can’t be disabled from the outside. How do you get in?”

 

Peter frowns and thinks for a moment. “Anything with security measures like that… you’re breaking into a planetary government building?”

 

“He’s sharp,” Vespa says. Peter can see her narrowed eyes in the rearview mirror.

 

“You _like_ sharp things,” Buddy says, reaching forward to take a short curl of green hair trailing down the back of Vespa’s neck and twirl it around her finger.

 

“Don’t try to be cute,” Vespa counters. “You already are; it doesn’t do anything to help your case.” Then, to Peter, she says, “You’ve made a decent guess at the target, now answer the question. How do you get in?”

 

“Easy,” Peter replies automatically. “I’d pull a long con. There’s a good chance they keep interns around, otherwise a cleaning job should work just as well. I could falsify background information, get the job, and be handed all the keys I need.”

 

“Won’t work,” Vespa says shortly. “Besides, you really want to risk putting your fingerprints in a government database?”

 

“Of course not,” Peter says. “I don’t have any.” He’d burned them off after Brahma, not wanting to make up excuses to wear gloves during any con he pulled. It had cost a pretty penny to have the scars cleaned up, but the neat blank slate left behind would serve him well for the rest of his career in crime. “It’s not too difficult to make a new set with a simple makeup prosthetic, and the right product will scan just as easily as real skin. I’d use contacts for the retina scans as well.”

 

Vespa raises an eyebrow.

 

“So why won’t it work?”

 

“We only have a month,” Buddy clarifies. “Certainly not enough time to get the job you’re looking for, and if you can’t disable the security remotely, then you certainly can’t hack into it to put yourself on their payroll.”

 

“I’ll come up with something else, then,” he insists. “What do you need to do once you’re inside?”

 

“That’s not the question you should be asking,” Buddy says. “It’s what _you_ need to do once you’re inside. We’ve had someone write a virus that will wipe out the security systems for us. We only need someone to get in and plant it in the building’s server room so that we can get in. You’d be opening the door for us.”

 

The reality of it finally sinks in. “You’re… offering me a job?” he says in amazement.

 

“We’re _considering_ you for a job. But only if you can make a plan that will work,” Buddy says. “The Forsetti capitol building houses a museum with one of the most impressive collections of art and artifacts in the galaxy. Usually, with a museum job we’d just walk in the front door, but because it’s housed in a government building, security is a much bigger issue, and our employer would prefer that we use a more… delicate method than we usually do.”

 

“I shouldn’t need more than a week to research the target and make a plan,” Peter says quickly. “Please. I’d be honored to work with you.”

 

Vespa rolls her eyes with a pained sigh, but Buddy says, “We’ll have you meet us on Forsetti in a week, then. Bring us your plan, and make sure it’s a good one. I’ll message you the details.”

 

She pulls a burner comms from her pocket and hands it to him, and can’t stop an awed grin from spreading over his face. And then he’s thrown forward, as the car comes to an abrupt stop in an empty field. He looks around. Vespa gets out, opens the door for Buddy, and tosses Peter the keys to the car.

 

“Try not to get arrested for stealing this before we see you again,” Vespa says.

 

Buddy steps out of the car, and Peter sees a spaceship flicker into view, its light-deflecting cloaking shields dropping away. Buddy and Vespa board the ship, Buddy calling back, “We’ll see you in a week. It was a pleasure to meet you, darling,” as Peter stares with his jaw dropped.

 

He doesn’t manage a word in reply. The ships doors close, and it’s rumbling engine has roars to life and lifts them up into the stars. What follows is a deafening silence as he stares up into the sky until long after they’ve disappeared. And finally he sits down in the grass, grinning again, dizzy with joy.


	2. Chapter 2

Peter had long hoped to make a visit to Forsetti in the summer, when its forests become a vivid green and its marble cities shine where they rise up above the treeline. Instead, when he arrives, it is in the dead of winter, trees stripped bare, snow and ice coating everything, and it’s so bright that at first he has to look away from the planet’s surface. His first impression, then, is not of Forsetti itself, but of its closest moon, Glitnir, tiny and ravaged by a bloody war for independence. As they pass, Peter stares, across a line of disinterested passengers and out the small window. There is a murmur of movement in the bombed out ruins of a city on the moon’s surface. Beside him, a woman snores.

 

Roy Nightshade had boarded his flight to Forsetti with the intention of visiting a cousin who had fallen ill, but Peter Nureyev arrives on the planet without family or name, just a text from a burner comms instructing him to get in a blue cab labeled with the number 597. He takes his time leaving the spaceport. First buys himself a cup of coffee, and scans the crowd for anyone too familiar or suspicious as he sips it. When he’s satisfied no one has made any note of Roy, he ducks into a bathroom and sheds the drab skin of him. The jeans and hoodie might be comfortable and inconspicuous for a long space flight, but they’re hardly suitable for a professional meeting with the stars of the criminal underworld. Peter dons a deep red suit, paints a bloody shade upon his lips, and slicks his hair back to show off a new pair of earrings--a lucky find from some stranger’s carry-on bag. He tops off the ensemble by replacing his contacts with a pair of glasses with round, reflective lenses; they’re more fashion than function, but if security in Forsetti’s spaceports is as tight as it is in the place he’s targeting, he’d like to keep his eyes away from any cameras.

 

Another text comes in as he finally steps out into the open street— _Don’t keep me waiting_.

 

The restaurant the cab takes him to is quaint and quiet, nothing particularly remarkable about it, but the few employees milling about all wear the sorts of shoes and watches that he’d expect from someone with a job that requires traveling in private space shuttles or helping the wealthy evade their taxes, rather than bussing tables, and that’s how he guesses it must be a front for something.

 

His suspicions are soon confirmed; a waiter ushers him towards a door in the back, typing a lengthy code into a keypad, and then leads him into a private room full of card tables. Buddy and Vespa sit together at one, and Buddy beckons him over and greets him with a sharp smile.

 

“You’re late,” she says, with an enigmatic glint in her eye.

 

“My apologies, Buddy.” He shrugs his carry-on bag off his shoulder and quickly sets about digging out the tablet filled with the encrypted files of his plans for the heist.

 

“I’m sure you’ll find a way to make it up to me,” she says dismissively. “Show me something impressive.”

 

Peter swallows and squares his shoulders as he pulls up the right files. He’d spent the past few weeks fussing over the details of the plan, correcting for flaws. It’s perfect now, as clean as any other job he’s planned; he might not have made any big scores in the years since… since he left Brahma, but every job he’s done has been planned and executed with the same care he’s taken all his life. The kind of care he learned all on his own, he reminds himself, learned with no teacher but the lasers of the law. He should be as confident in this plan as any other, but he can’t shake an anxiety of the kind he’d felt when Mag first had him plan one of their jobs on his own, can’t shake the feeling of standing in their safehouse, papers clutched in his shaky hands, the nervous grin that had swept across his face when Mag said,

 

_Go ahead, Pete. Dazzle me._

 

He knows how to cover his nerves better now, though. He sets the tablet down on the table in front of Buddy. Steady hands, steady voice. Confidence is a character like any other, and he’s become well acquainted with the stage.

 

“This is Robert Epsilon Roe VIII, recent graduate of Grey University, current intern with a representative of Forsetti’s parliament. He works in the legislative offices, on the twelfth floor of the capitol building, same floor as the security offices. Now, his keycard doesn’t allow him access to the security offices, but it does grant him access to his representative’s office, which shares a wall with the security offices. Because of the sheer amount of ventilation the security offices’ server room needs, the space above the ceiling of the entire floor is hollowed out to make room for it. All he would need to do is get up into the ceiling, find where the ventilation shafts meet the server room, and drop down into the server room to plug your virus into the servers. Then, all the security would be knocked out for as long as you need. He’s our plan.”

 

He shows photos of Rob, and a blueprint of the twelfth floor, marked and labeled carefully with his own notes.

 

He’d also made plans for his own escape. He’d studied the capitol building’s emergency protocol thoroughly in preparing to impersonate Rob, and he knows that in the case of an emergency in the museum, the parliament staff would be safely evacuated from the upper floors, and he with them. If anything goes wrong, he’d need to rely on no one but himself to get to safety.

 

“So you’re saying your plan is... rob the intern?” Vespa says with a withering look that says she knows he thinks he’s funny and she doesn’t agree.

 

Peter grins widely. “Identity theft, actually,” he says. “This is me.” He slides to another picture, one he took of himself in his hotel room three nights ago. It looks practically identical to the picture he pulled off of Rob’s social media; he’d used a wig to match Rob’s red hair, though he intends to do a proper dye job before the heist, and facial prosthetics and an ungodly amount of contouring to shape his face into an identical copy of Rob’s.

 

Buddy raises an eyebrow. “I don’t think ‘identity theft’ is meant to be taken quite that literally.”

 

“All in the power of interpretation, Ms. Aurinko.”

 

“I grant that it’s a clever trick, but a camera is much easier to trick than a building full of government workers. You really think this will work?”

 

“I’ve done my research thoroughly,” he says. “He has his suits custom made; his measurements are close enough to mine for the disguise to work, even for people who see him every day. I’ve been digging up any background information I’ll need on him, and I’ll run some surveillance to solidify the impersonation and get any other information I’ll need.”

 

Buddy eyes him dubiously.

 

“If you’ve another plan, I’m open to it,” he says.

 

The look on her face tells him all he needs to know. She doesn’t. “Fine. The job is yours. Though I think we should take some time to get to know each other before we start working together in any official capacity. Vespa?”

 

At her prompting, Vespa slides a deck of cards across the table towards him. “Shuffle these.”

 

“Just humor her, dear,” Buddy says, and gets up from the table. “I’ll be busy preparing our game.”

 

He wants to ask what she means, but she turns away before he can, and Vespa shoots him a sharp, impatient look.

 

He picks up the deck gingerly; the cards are aged and faded, and he’s almost afraid they’ll crumble to dust in his hands. It seems they’re sturdier than they look, though, and as he spreads them apart in his hands his eyes widen in wonder and recognition. Each card is carefully handcrafted, delicately detailed, with tarnished gilding and ink in colors still vivid after centuries of fading. “Is this… did you steal this?”

 

“They were a gift from Buddy. And _Buddy_ says they were a gift to her from Princess Bellanova XXXVIII, but I don’t always agree with her on her definition of gifts,” Vespa says, rolling her eyes affectionately.

 

“Annalise of Errai’s personal tarot deck…” Peter says, and he can’t help the way his awe bubbles up and spills from his mouth. “Queen-consort of the fourteenth monarch of the Gamma Cephei system. They say she foretold her own assassination with this deck, that her spirit is still tethered to these cards. Some say it’s the only real divination tool in the galaxy.”

 

Vespa snorts. “And some people say any halfway decent psychic is just a con artist.”

 

“Oh? And what would you say?”

 

“I’d say Buddy’s a way better con than I am, and since she’s not the one reading your cards, you can decide that for yourself. This reading’s more for my benefit anyway. You done shuffling those?”

 

Peter passes her back the cards.

 

“I’ll keep this quick and simple; we’re just going to do a three card reading.” She picks three cards from the deck and lays them out in front of her, face down, tapping each as she sets it down. “Past, present, future. Turn them over.”

 

Peter reaches hesitantly for the one she chose as his past, and turns it over to reveal the three of swords. He looks up, and finds Vespa meeting his eyes for the first time since he sat down across from her. He almost shudders under the piercing knife of her gaze, the hint of a sympathetic grimace on her lips.

 

He sets his jaw, tries to keep a stony countenance. “Well,” he says. “I suppose that one speaks for itself.”

 

There’s no denying what it means, even for someone so thorough in the practice of lying to himself as he is. Grief. Heartbreak. Betrayal. Three blades struck through a heart, such a perfect, mocking mirror of Mag’s death. He thinks, three years on, that it shouldn’t still hurt the way it does, but he still finds himself remembering it, reliving it, searching desperately for a way he could have changed the outcome. It’s always the same.

 

“You want to tell me what that means to you?” Vespa asks.

 

“I’ll keep the gory details to myself, thank you,” he says, quick and clipped. He flips over the next card. Eight of cups. “There, that’s not so bad. Eight of cups means… transition. Moving on and… seeking fulfillment?”

 

“It’s a reversal,” Vespa says tersely. “This reading is about what’s affecting your current situation. You wouldn’t pull a card like that for your past if it wasn’t still relevant.”

 

“You’re quite convinced by this, then?”

 

Vespa drums her fingers against the card. “Eight of cups reversal could be aimlessness, not having a clear goal, _refusing_ to move on from something. Buddy’s right about you.”

 

“Buddy’s—” He stops himself before he can ask; they’re hiring him for a job, of course they’ve been talking about him. “What’s she right about?”

 

“You have all the skills you need to break into a secure government facility and take whatever you want, and instead you’ve been picking pockets for scraps at other thieves’ crime scenes. You tell me.” She bites at the corner of a nail, looking oddly satisfied somehow. “Turn over the last card.”

 

Peter fishes for a retort but finds all of them lacking, and he blushes to think they see him as some poor lost puppy, following at their heels. He turns the final card: the moon. More uncertainty.

 

Vespa sucks in a slow, sharp breath.

 

Peter furrows his brow. “What?”

 

“Nothing,” she says. “Tell me what you think it means.”

 

Peter frowns. “The moon is fear, uncertainty, illusion?” And quite possibly deception, revealing falsehoods. Buddy had seemed quite set on peeling away his aliases when she’d spoken to him in the car, and he’s chilled to the bone by the idea that by the time this is done, she’ll have discovered who he really is. He can only hope it means something else.

 

“What’s it mean _to you?_ ” Vespa presses.

 

“I rather think that’s my business,” Peter counters. “What do _you_ think it means?”

 

“That this might be a mistake.” She sweeps up the cards and clutches them in her fist.

 

“What?” Peter asks, indignation blooming on his face. He doesn’t get a chance to chase the answers he wants, though, because at that moment Buddy returns, draping herself over Vespa’s shoulders and plucking the cards from her hand. She examines them for a moment and raises an eyebrow at Vespa.

 

“Another lucky coincidence?” Buddy asks dryly.

 

The corner of Vespa’s mouth twitches into something that’s not quite a smile, in recognition of a joke that has long since grown old. “Call it what you want. Not sure I’d really consider this one lucky, though.”

 

“No, I suppose not,” Buddy says, looking at the cards a little sadly. She tucks them away into a pocket, then says to Peter, “Have you ever played Rangian street poker?”

 

Peter pulls the evident frustration on his face into something a little more composed. “Once or twice,” he says.

 

“Good, good, I assume you’re familiar with standard variation rules?”

 

Peter nods slowly, not liking where this is going.

 

“Excellent. We’ll stick with that, then. Come with me.” She goes back to the table she’d been setting up the game at, Vespa following to perch on the armrest of Buddy’s chair. When Peter doesn’t follow, Buddy looks back and tilts her head curiously.

 

“Forgive me if I’m mistaken, Ms. Aurinko, but standard variation rules state that if one player lies, the other…”

 

“Is to kill them, yes. What are you waiting for?”

 

Peter hopes the way he blanches at that isn’t too visible. “I just… hardly think that sounds necessary, wouldn’t you agree?”

 

Buddy smiles warmly. “Yes, there’s no need to let it come to that, so I suppose we’ll both just have to be honest, won’t we? Come on, darling, what’s the fun in a game with nothing at stake?”

 

Peter says nothing more, just crosses the room and sits down at the table with Buddy. She takes up her hand and flips through the cards in it, then blithely sets the game into motion. “I’ll ask first. What’s your real name?”

 

Peter frowns at his own hand, wracking his brain for any sense of strategy with the cards before him. Without looking up, clinging to his composure, he responds, “What’s the access code to your personal bank account?”

 

Buddy laughs, and a wicked grin crosses her face. “Alright, I’ll play.”

 

Peter feels his heart stop, and he fumbles for any word that will put a stop to this, any lie to hide behind, but he can’t take back his question, and Buddy’s already proved she can find all the information she wants on his false names. There’s no way he’ll have to time to fabricate one convincing enough with this little time. Only the cards can save him now.

 

His hand is a decent one, at least, but it would certainly serve a more experienced player better. He spends unbearably long stretches of time poring over the consequences of each card he might play, and the match makes its slow, inevitable march toward the answer.

 

They both lay down their final hands. Peter can’t bring himself to look at Buddy’s hand, and grips the edge of the table to hide the tremor that wants to overtake his own. Then, as carelessly as she posed her question, Buddy says, “Your win.”

 

“Oh god.” Peter sighs with relief and practically collapses in his chair.

 

Buddy looks on for a moment, then gestures impatiently.

 

“Right.” Peter tears his hand and sets the remnants on the table.

 

Buddy takes one, pulls a pen from her pocket, and scrawls a long string of numbers onto one of the halves. “There you are. The access code to my personal bank account,” she says. “Though you should know that it’s voice activated, responds only to my voice, and is only accessible through my comms. Let me know when you’ve solved how to get into that one without me knowing.”

 

Peter nods, feeling a blush come over his face, and reluctantly accepts the torn card as Buddy pushes it back across the table to him.

 

“A word of advice, dear. You’ll do better in this game if you learn to leverage what you already know about your opponent. I won’t ask you that question again, but I won’t let you win again either. Your ask.”

 

Peter stares down at the table and nods. Then he asks, “What was the first thing you ever stole?”

 

Buddy smiles more kindly. “Alright, I’ll ask you the same.”

 

That match, like the last, carries on at a snail’s pace as Peter considers each of his cards carefully for every move. Buddy is patient though, and true to her word; when the final cards are played, she tears her hand.

 

“It’s nothing impressive,” he admits. “Just a few rolls from a bakery. I was eight. My friends and I had nothing to eat, and the bakery had poured some toxic chemical mixture over the previous day’s leftovers when they threw them out, to dissuade homeless kids like myself from lingering in the back alley. It didn’t work. I waited back there until the door to the kitchen opened, took everything I could get my hands on, and ran.”

 

He’d spent the better part of the next week cowering inside an abandoned building, praying to anything that the Guardian Angel System wouldn’t shoot him down the second he left its walls. He told himself he’d gotten away with it that time because of luck. Next time, he’d be better, and he’d get away on his own skill alone. He stares into his cards, not wanting to see the looks of pity on Buddy and Vespa’s faces.

 

“Well, we all get our start somewhere,” is all Buddy says. “My ask. What planet are you from?”

 

“When you robbed the Midas Bank on Hephaestus B, how did you escape?”

 

Vespa snorts. That getaway had been debated for years, with no answers found by the public, law enforcement, or most of the criminal underworld, and Peter guessed that they’d had no intentions of revealing that particular secret.

 

“Very well then,” Buddy says, and the match begins. Peter’s not surprised when Buddy wins again.

 

“Brahma,” he says.

 

Buddy and Vespa share a look, Buddy with one eyebrow raised, Vespa letting out a long, low whistle. “Not impressive, you said?”

 

A decade ago, there’d been hardly a petty shoplifting offense that hadn’t been pulled off with the guile of a professional criminal, and they all knew it.

 

“It wasn’t,” Peter insists. “That was luck. My _second_ theft was impressive.”

 

“Then you’ll have to tell me about it sometime. Your ask.”

 

“What are you stealing from the capitol building?”

 

Buddy’s smile drops away. Beside her, Vespa bites her lip. Buddy counters easily, “What’s your name?”

 

“Pass,” Peter says sharply. “Why?”

 

Buddy raises a hand to cut him off. “My ask this time. How did you learn to make your forgeries?”

 

Peter just repeats his previous question, more insistently. “Why won’t you tell me what we’re stealing?”

 

Buddy wins the next round, of course. Peter has to fight to keep his posture from becoming visibly defensive. He says, “I used to have a partner. He caught me picking someone’s pocket once, decided I had talent, and taught me…” He fights himself from saying _everything I know._ It’s not true, he reminds himself. He’s better off on his own. “Taught me a lot.”

 

Buddy drums her fingers against the pocket where she’d put the tarot cards as she considers this, like she wants more than the answer he gave. She doesn’t ask, though. “I’ll give you and answer for free this time; I think sowing distrust would be very bad for the both of us. I’m sure you already know, but trust is very important and in very short supply in this business. Our employer values secrecy very highly in this job, and had Vespa and I sign a non-disclosure agreement. That’s why we need you to take care of the security system rather than us making a more theatrical entrance. I can tell you that we’re robbing the museum, but I can’t tell you anything more. Will that satisfy you?”

 

It won’t, but Peter nods anyway; they both have secrets to keep.

 

Buddy checks her watch. “We’ve time for a few more rounds, anything more you’d like to ask?”

 

“Nothing I expect to get an answer for. Why did you assume Dark Matters was after you when you found me?” Peter asks.

 

“Why did you leave Brahma?” Buddy counters.

 

“Pass.”

 

Buddy wins the next few rounds, as Peter anticipated, but mercifully she drops the subject of Mag and Brahma entirely, earning only trivial answers—Peter’s favorite planet he’s visited, where he gets his suits tailored, and the like. Peter’s only triumph is in returning to his question about their Midas Bank getaway, but that win, and being let in on a secret hardly any other thief in the galaxy knows, is enough to leave him glowing with delight. By that time the sun is setting outside and Peter is getting distracted as Vespa, having grown bored of the game, twirls a butterfly knife around her fingers, barely letting it stop in her grip before it’s making another rotation.

 

Buddy collects the cards and they leave the restaurant. It’s a long drive to their temporary home, a massive house on the shore of a secluded lake. It’s the fifth vacation home of some wealthy family from another planet, Buddy informs him, and it’s been absent and forgotten for years, the perfect luxury safehouse for a couple of thieves. Peter watches the city dissolve into the sparsely wooded expanse of Forsetti’s countryside as they travel. He looks on in wonder as skeletal trees reach up to spear the sky from the frozen fields below. As she drives, Buddy talks animatedly to Vespa, who keeps silent, happy, it seems, to let Buddy’s words keep her occupied. Every time Buddy falls silent, she seems to fidget anxiously, and her eyes flicker over to Peter more often than not.

 

When they arrive, Vespa disappears to make a call. Peter can’t make out her words; she’s in another room, speaking quickly, in a language he doesn’t understand. He can make out her tone, though, a heavy frustration, born out of distress. He looks to Buddy for an explanation, but she takes his arm, intent on distracting him from Vespa, and shows him to a bedroom on the second floor instead. It’s beautifully furnished, and well-kept, though Peter suspects it hasn’t been used in a long time. A guest room, most likely. He starts unpacking his things.

 

“I hope the room is to your liking. If not, well, anything that belongs to our gracious hosts is ours, for the time being. Feel free to explore and take whatever you’d like,” Buddy says. “And if you need anything, just call. Our room is just down the hall.”

 

She points out the direction of the master bedroom, then leaves him to settle in. He doesn’t spend long there. Buddy has gone downstairs to dust off an old piano sitting on display in the front atrium, and Vespa is nowhere to be seen, but he can still hear, sometimes, the raising of her voice from a distant room.

 

He lets himself into the master bedroom. There’s a large parlor that comes before the bedroom itself, and Buddy and Vespa have clearly made themselves at home there. Buddy’s elaborate dresses—many seeming more like abstract sculptures than actual garments—are draped over a loveseat. On the floor in front of it is an open suitcase—Vespa’s, from the look of it—stuffed with much more practical apparel. There’s a collection of stolen jewels and art pieces adorning the top of a cabinet, and on an elegant glass table is an array of weapons, meticulously organized. Peter’s eyes catch on a lovely engraved dagger, the hilt decorated with ornate filigree. He picks it up, delicately, lays the blade against his hand, and jerks his hand back with a sharp inhale of breath when the barest touch nearly slices his palm open. He’s more careful examining the next few.

 

One thing on the table doesn’t seem to fit. It sits at the end of the line of weaponry, a little gold perfume bottle in the shape of a knife. He pockets it, assuming it to be a leftover from the absent owners of the lakehouse, rather than something of Buddy and Vespa’s. Soon after, he hears footsteps from the floor below, and slips back out into the hallway before he’s discovered.

 

He explores the rest of the lakehouse, then. It’s truly massive, and he’s grateful for that—it will be easy to keep to himself, to keep his secrets in a place like this. As thrilling as it is to be working with Buddy and Vespa, his top priority has to remain self-preservation. It will be easier to focus on his work, too, with all this space to himself. He’s managed to plan complicated jobs before even in crowded hostels, but never one like this, and the solitude will certainly be a benefit to him. Besides, Buddy and Vespa will be busy working on their own preparations for the heist. He doesn’t see them again before he goes to sleep that night, and he rests confident in his seclusion.


	3. Chapter 3

The next morning, when Peter wakes, he realizes that he was terribly mistaken.

 

He hears them before he opens his eyes. He’s not surprised they got into his room without waking him; Vespa at least is an expert in sneaking around unseen and unheard. He’s only surprised it took him so long to wake up, once they decided their silence wasn’t necessary. He’s never been as light a sleeper as he wished. He knows not to panic when he wakes, though, much as he wants to. He lies completely still as someone perches on the foot of the bed.

 

“Check that pocket on the side,” she instructs. Buddy, then. He hears something rattle and then feels a soft weight land somewhere else on the bed.

 

He opens the eye closest to the pillow so as not to be detected, and sees his belongings spilled across the floor, Vespa rifling through his suitcase. He shifts, as if only tugging his pillow closer, and curls his hand around the knife hidden underneath it. Then, with a slow and deliberate calm he doesn’t feel, he says, “I thought I was here to be the perpetrator of a theft, not the victim of one?”

 

Vespa freezes for a moment and looks up to meet his even gaze. Then she goes back to tearing apart his suitcase, bites at her lip, and says, “Funny, so did I.” At the same time, Buddy extends a leg to prod her arm and says, “See, I told you he wasn’t dying.”

 

Peter sits up, abandoning the knife beneath the pillow again, and tilts his head to one side. “I’m sorry?”

 

“Didn’t think he was,” Vespa says. Then, to Peter, “Apology not accepted. Where is it?”

 

Peter opens his mouth but doesn’t say a word.

 

“Well at any rate he should learn to sleep a little lighter,” Buddy says. “We’re missing a perfume bottle. Gold-tinted glass, in the shape of a knife.

 

Peter blinks, and notes that Buddy is holding his suit coat from the day before, pulling handfuls of his possessions from its pockets.

 

“Give me that,” he snaps. He can feel his face flushing a furious red from the compounded embarrassment of being caught in a misdeed, and having his belongings searched through as though they came in here with a warrant.

 

Buddy hands over the jacket. He takes it by the bottom hem, lifts it up, and shakes it over his lap until both pockets are emptied of their contents. Vespa stares in vague dismay at the disorderly pile, but looks begrudgingly relieved as Peter locates the perfume bottle and picks it up.

 

“Any other ill-gotten trinkets you’d like to return?” Buddy says, as Vespa stands and snatches the perfume bottle from Peter’s hand.

 

He frowns at the pile, then lifts a pair of earrings from it. “These don’t belong to either of you, do they?”

 

Buddy takes his hand, turning it to drop them into her own palm. “They do now.”

 

Vespa nudges at Peter’s legs, and he moves to make room for her to sit with Buddy on the foot of the bed. “Do you know what this is?” she says, holding up the perfume bottle again.

 

“Perfume?” he asks, confused by the question. “I’ve been shopping around for a new one.”

 

“It’s poison,” Vespa says.

 

“Oh.”

 

“Yeah. ‘Oh.’ ”

 

“You left it lying out on a table last night,” Peter defends. “How was I to know?”

 

“I left it on a table in the parlor of Buddy’s and my room, with a bunch of other deadly weapons. Do you even bother to think before you take things?”

 

He does, and he’d thought that the perfume bottle would have looked particularly nice with a gold and crystal watch he’d picked up a few weeks back, and possibly the name Basileus Dagger if he was feeling particularly theatrical, but he doesn’t say as much. “Sorry,” he says curtly.

 

“It’s fine,” Vespa says, with a roughness to her voice that says it isn’t. “I’m just glad you didn’t decide to see how it smelled, too. I like you better alive.”

 

“That’s very kind of you,” he says. “And somewhat unexpected given the number of times you two have threatened to murder me.”

 

Buddy laughs, and that makes Vespa crack a smile too.

 

“Oh have a little trust,” Buddy says. “I’ve said before, it’s rather important in our line of work. And I’d hardly consider yesterday’s little game a threat, anyway.”

 

Peter puts his face in his hands, and he can still feel the heat from his blushing cheeks, so blatantly obvious without any makeup on to cover it up. “I’ll give a thought to trust, perhaps, if you’d so kindly give one to personal boundaries. Now would you please get out and let me make myself at least somewhat presentable before you accuse me of anything more?”

 

“Fine. Come down for breakfast when you’re ready, though, we’ve got shit to talk about, Magpie.” Vespa grins, apparently pleased with the new nickname.

 

Peter grimaces, and waits until they’re out the door before collapsing back into bed with a groan. _Mag_ pie, of all the things to call him. He thinks he’d rather like to be in a prison on Brahma, or the surface of a star, or anywhere but here.

 

*

 

Vespa hands him a plate of scrambled eggs when he arrives in the kitchen, and ushers him impatiently to the table. He’d taken a long time to get ready, fussing over his appearance more than usual, and worrying about what was in store for him when he emerged even more than that. Vespa seems to take his lateness as a personal slight, or else is still angry over the perfume debacle.

 

Buddy does most of the talking. Neither of them can case the museum themselves, being far too easily recognizable, so that will be his first task in working with them.

 

He arrives at the capitol building alone in the late morning, takes a map of the museum, and plays the part of a tourist as he follows it through, room by room. It’s not a difficult act; he’s fascinated by the history of the planet and the art that’s come from it over so many centuries.

 

More than that, he’s still puzzling over the mystery of the actual target of the theft. He’d researched the collection before arriving, of course, made some preliminary guesses, but he hopes the context of seeing them in the museum might reveal something more. There’s a lingering dissatisfaction left with not knowing what Buddy and Vespa are stealing here, one that writhes around in his head and encourages worse things—fear, suspicion, reckless paranoia. He crushes the thoughts down. Buddy and Vespa are trusting him with what’s clearly an important job to them. He won’t betray that trust by giving in to reckless emotions. Still, he examines each exhibit with ravenous interest, intent on guessing which piece in the collection might be their target.

 

He’s unsuccessful, to his chagrin. Each piece is as likely as any other to be the target. Nothing in particular stands out to him, which is to say that each of the pieces is extraordinary enough for a cautious, historically-minded collector to shovel out outrageous numbers of creds to ensure it’s safe and discreet acquisition. The secrecy could be purely paranoia on the part of their employer, but the question keeps itching at Peter, below his thoughts, like a memory that doesn’t quite come to the surface. He scribbles down the names of a few of the pieces on the back of his map, still dissatisfied.

 

He puts the thought from his mind, and focuses in on what he’s really here for: the security systems. Buddy and Vespa had only asked that he verify the information that had already been given to them, so he makes the rounds again, through each room, this time only presenting the false guise of looking at the exhibits as he carefully notes the locations and types of security systems. He even manages to tag along with a tour of the restoration rooms. When he’s done, he ducks into a bathroom and marks all of his findings on the map, including an extra map drawn from memory of his trip through the restoration rooms.

 

His work done, he decides to explore the city; it’s a rare occasion that he gets to visit a planet terraformed so thoroughly as Forsetti, and though he had hoped to see it in the summer, the winter brings its own wonders. A fresh coating of snow lies over everything, dazzlingly bright and soft as down, and seems to muffle the sounds of the city to a ghostly murmur. He wanders the streets until starset.

 

It’s late in the evening when he returns, and when he comes to the door of the lakehouse he can hear music drifting through the dark. It spills out in full force when he opens the door, and he lingers in the entryway, listening to the song. Buddy has resurrected the grand piano in the front atrium, and the sound of it resonates up into the high ceilings of the room. The tune Buddy plays is a jagged, melancholy folk song, oddly dance-like in its cadences, and from somewhere in the room, Peter can hear Vespa’s husky voice singing along in a language he doesn’t recognize from some other Outer Rim planet.

 

Peter stays in the doorway, not wanting to draw attention to himself; in part he’s simply captivated by the music, but a part of him feels unprepared to face Buddy and Vespa again, Buddy with her imploring manner and Vespa with her sharp-eyed suspicion. He paradoxically covets and fears their attention. Once he’d dreamed that being on their level, catching their eyes, would suit him like a spotlight. Now, he rather finds it’s more like being pinned beneath a microscope, fearing any twist of the focus might reveal his secrets, his name.

 

The song draws to an abrupt end, and Peter realizes he’s still standing in the doorway, cold air rushing in behind him. He draws it shut quickly and carefully, and braces himself.

 

Vespa calls out, “How did it go?”

 

“Fine,” he responds, and fearing his nervousness makes him sound uncertain of his success, he rushes to say, “I’ve a full catalogue of the security systems in use at the museum; they seem to match up with our information, but I’m going to have to compare them before I can say for sure.”

 

Then he realizes he’s not sure where to direct his words. Buddy sits at the piano, leveling her gaze at him, but Vespa is nowhere to be found. “Where… are you?”

 

He looks around, and then up, and finds Vespa sprawled across one of the narrow rafters, arms folded carelessly behind her head. He stares, knowing better than to be surprised, but spends a long few seconds trying to mentally calculate her route up to the ceiling.

 

“She likes to feel tall,” Buddy says dryly.

 

Vespa extends her middle finger out into the air, but Peter can imagine the smile on her face, always a little lopsided and awkward.

 

Buddy grins up at her, then turns back to Peter, all business. “Let me see what you’ve found.”

 

He brings the map over to her, and before he can start to explain, she motions a little signal to Vespa and stands up from the bench. Peter follows her gaze up to the ceiling, where Vespa tumbles gracefully off of the rafters. His jaw drops and his heart catches in his throat as for a single, frozen moment she seems to hang there in the air, falling from twenty feet up. Neither Buddy nor Vespa seem to share his fear. Vespa’s eyes are closed as she drops into Buddy’s arms. Buddy dips low to the ground, bending like a willow tree, then rises again holding Vespa bridal style, both of them giggling as Buddy sits back down on the piano bench with Vespa in her lap.

 

The both look at him expectantly, and he stammers for a moment, because in the space of that fall he’d forgotten he was even holding the map. He gathers himself and explains his notes and markings on it, trying not to look startled. The two of them look on, their eyes lit up with matching intensity, then Buddy plucks the map from his hands to more carefully examine it herself. She nods approvingly, and then, before Peter can stop her, flips over the map to examine his scrawled list across the back. He shifts, a little uncomfortably, as Vespa glares down at the words. Buddy, though, just smiles as though she finds the whole situation faintly amusing, and passes the paper back to him.

 

“You can keep guessing, if you’d like, but I don’t give hints.” Then she gestures toward the piano’s keys. “Play me something?”

 

He fumbles for a response to her request. He’d taught himself to play on a small keyboard he’d toted across the stars for a while, maintaining some vague hope that the skill would come in handy during a con, but never developing it enough to make it worth anything. He’d try to practice old standards from Earth, but most nights he’d find his thoughts drifting toward songs he’d heard from a Brahmese street musician years before, and too often he would find himself remembering the guitar he’d heard in the square on New Kinshasa, his hands shaking as he searched for the notes that would bring that melody back to him, fraught and mournful as it was. One night, after a client had broken their deal mid-heist and left him alone to pick up the pieces, he’d gone back to his hotel room and pulled the keyboard out in the hopes of calming himself down. Instead, he’d broken it in his frustration, and that had been the end of that.

 

Still, he’s grateful for the change in subject, and can’t refuse her request without risking a return to less desirable discussions, so he lays his fingers atop the keys and racks his brain for something to play. He settles on a lively tune he’d heard at parades and street fairs on Brahma, wincing as his fingers trip over wrong notes and awkward pauses.

 

Buddy seems satisfied enough with it, and claps politely when he finishes.

 

He offers a tight smile in response, and stands up again. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to go compare the plans with my notes and make sure they match up.” He raises the map again.

 

“If you must,” Buddy sighs. Vespa watches as he leaves, and he can’t tell if she’s pleased to see him go, or suspicious of his flightiness. Recalling their inviting themselves into his room this morning, he makes himself a goal of finding more of the less-traveled, hidden spaces of the lakehouse to take refuge in.


	4. Chapter 4

He wakes early the next day, long before starrise, and finds he’s alone in his room. He’s more relieved than he thought he’d be by that. He prepares for the day, dragging his routine out slowly, in a way he’d like to pretend is languid and luxurious, though the thought of facing Buddy and Vespa again is what keeps him trapped in his room. His reprieve doesn’t last long, and he’s caught off guard by a knock at his door.

 

“Yes?” he answers.

 

“Am I permitted to enter his majesty’s chambers?” Buddy mocks from the hallway. He takes a moment to parse out the meaning behind the nickname. A play on his choice in aliases, of course, but is it mere teasing, or a hint of something else—a reminder that she knows they’re false, and wants the truth.

 

He checks his hair again in the mirror and pulls open the door to greet her. “Good morning, Buddy.”

 

“Good morning, dear. Ready?”

 

He’ll be spending the day tailing his mark, preparing to learn his routines, plant any surveillance might be needed, and setting his plan in motion to steal Rob’s identity. This part of the job is his alone, but he’s still surprised at how much they’re allowing him to take the lead. Relying on him.

 

“Of course,” he says.

 

“Good. Vespa will be going with you; she’s quite adept at this sort of thing. We thought you might find her advice helpful.”

 

He tries to keep the sting of those words from showing on his face. Buddy might frame it as generosity, but it makes sense that they wouldn’t trust him to do this himself, that Vespa especially would want to keep an eye on him. He still keeps going back to her evasive anxiety when he drew the moon for his third card, still doesn’t understand what she meant by it.

 

He won’t find out. She keeps quiet the whole ride into the city. Peter almost tries to make some small talk, but stops himself short when Vespa shoots him an icy look as he opens his mouth.

 

“What?” she asks.

 

“Nothing,” he quickly says, and she scoffs and goes back to reading some book she brought.

 

He had wondered at first about her being recognized, but the winter weather has solved that issue for them. It’s a cold, blustery day, and everyone is bundled up. Vespa’s form is obscured by the shapeless coat she wears, her hat covers the vibrant green of her hair, and she keeps a bulky scarf pulled up over the lower half of her face. Only her eyes are visible. In all honesty, he probably looks poorly dressed for the weather next to her, but he’d gotten accustomed to the cold on Brahma.

 

They park their car across the street from Rob’s apartment. Peter locates his car, and Vespa sneaks out to plant a tracking device on it. Minutes later, he leaves the apartment with a pair of ice-skates slung over his shoulder. He tosses them into the trunk and sets out to go to work. Peter and Vespa wait in their car, watching his movements on Vespa’s comms. Rob stops in at a coffeeshop before going to the museum. Peter notes the name and location of it.

 

“We’ll have to make contact to plant the camera; that wouldn’t be a bad place to do it,” Peter comments casually, and waits with bated breath, hoping for her approval.

 

Vespa grunts an indifferent response.

 

“I can check through the security camera backlogs while he’s at work, see if he’s a regular there,” he continues.

 

“Good,” she says. “You do that. Do you have his apartment number?”

 

“Of course, but I hardly think we should break in right n—”

 

“What is it?”

 

He tells her.

 

She scans the facade of the building, fixes her eyes on one of the windows, and says, “He left his blinds open. I’ll be back.”

 

She pulls a spyglass from one of her pockets and leaves the car, disappearing into a dark alley. He can make out her silhouette scaling the side of a building, disappearing onto the roof. She lingers up there for a long time. He counts the minutes as they pass, eventually giving up and worrying instead over whether to message her comms. He’s almost decided when she startles him opening the car door again. He hadn’t seen her come down.

 

“There’s no need to stare, Magpie.”

 

He nearly flinches back at the name. “Don’t— don’t call me that.”

 

“Fine. I found a way in. Now’s a bad time to break in, like you said, too visible if any of his neighbors care, but we’ll keep an eye on his movements. You saw the skates he stuck in his car?”

 

Peter nods.

 

“What do you think?”

 

“I have records from competitions dating back a few years. He’s very good. I’ve checked the local ice rinks; his figure skating club doesn’t have ice time tonight, so my guess is the public rink a few blocks from here.”

 

“We’ll see.”

 

His guess turns out to be right. When Rob leaves work, he leads them directly to the outdoor rink. It takes up the majority of a sprawling park near the center of the city, surrounded by trees strung with glistening lights. Vespa slips a nanotech camera into her pocket, with intent to plant it on Rob’s coat. Then she sets about procuring two pairs of rental skates while Peter watches the skaters from the stands. It’s crowded, easy for them to hide in, and any collision will look accidental. Even better, Rob stands out from the crowd; he takes off around the perimeter of the rink with a power and grace matched by few other skaters. Peter smiles. It’s so easy to tail a show-off. After circling the rink a couple times, he drifts toward the center, where a large portion of the ice is sectioned off by cones for the more skilled skaters to practice.

 

Since he has no reason to worry about being seen, and no reason to worry about losing track of the mark, Peter thinks this might even be fun. He’d always harbored some small desire to try skating, but never had the chance. When Brahma froze over each year, he’d always been more preoccupied with finding shelter from the cold than venturing out into it to sample idyllic winter hobbies.

 

Vespa returns, and hands Peter a pair of skates covered in small scuff marks, the leather so worn that his ankles wobble a bit even when he laces them up as tight as can be. But he’s managed to look graceful in six-inch stilettos, so he’s hardly worried.

 

“Sorry for the wear on those, rentals are always shit. The blades’ll be pretty dull so you’ll want to be careful,” Vespa says as she watches him test his footing.

 

“I’ll be quite alright, I think,” he says, and strides casually to the edge of the ice. The walls lining the ice only rise about knee-high, hardly anything to lean on for balance or support. He stands in the little doorway of the rink for a moment, as if it’s the edge of a cliff, calculating his first step. It can’t be that hard, he tells himself. Just put one foot on the ice and push off the ground, look how easily everyone else is gliding across the surface.

 

He steps out onto the ice and immediately feels like a newborn fawn, like his legs are about to slide out from underneath him. But there’s nothing to cling to, so he steadies himself. He doesn’t want to pick his feet up off the ground, but he tries to at least get clear of the doorway, propelling himself forward with the flat of one blade. The dull metal skids, though, sends him falling backwards, and he overcorrects by lurching forward and lands with a thud that bruises his knees and leaves him sprawled out on his belly across the ice.

 

He’s barely pushed himself back up onto his knees when Vespa comes circling around him, lazily riding a deep curve on one foot. Backwards.

 

“Quite alright?” she says mockingly, muffled just slightly by the scarf.

 

He sits back on his heels to dust off the ice caked onto him. “You were right about the blades. I’m sure I’ll get the hang of it soon I just… need a minute to find my footing.”

 

When he looks up, she’s offering out a hand. He shakes his head, grabs the railing instead, and pushes himself back up. Vespa grabs his arm anyway, brushes the clumps of ice he missed off of one, then the other. She starts to move, then, slowly with the current of people around them, pulling him along, her arm linked with his.

 

“I think I can manage myself, really, you don’t have to—” he’s cut off as they skate over a rough patch of ice, one that pitches him forward and makes him grip tightly at her shoulder for support. She moves around him, then, so that she’s skating backwards, and can hold both of his arms.

 

She’s clearly comfortable, even with the poor quality of her own skates and holding half Peter’s weight. Another time, he would admire her skill, but now he’s too preoccupied with his own incompetence to think of it.

 

“Sunshine taught me to skate when we took a vacation to Enceladus,” Vespa says, and he’s surprised to hear her speak so casually, despite her guarded tone. When she sees the way Peter smiles at her nickname for Buddy, she snaps, “Don’t laugh, or I’ll find you a nickname you like even less than Magpie.”

 

“I think you’d find that a rather difficult task. And I’m not laughing; I think it’s sweet,” he says.

 

Vespa doesn’t look convinced.

 

Still, he’s emboldened by her willingness to talk to him, and excited by the opportunity to ask more about her work. “Enceladus. That was where you stole the—”

 

“Nope,” she cuts him off. “Not having this conversation.”

 

He can’t stop himself, though. “That heist was _incredible_ , it was all anyone was talking about, even the news streams on Brahma—”

 

“ _Stop,_ ” she hisses. “Do you _want_ someone to hear you?”

 

“I’m sorry,” he says tersely, and if he could drop his hands from hers he would, but evidently she still doesn’t believe he’s capable enough to even hold himself upright. He resents that she’s probably right. He glowers at his feet, the old, scraped up skates and the rough ice that rumbles beneath them.

 

“You shouldn’t look down like that,” Vespa offers. “It’ll throw your balance forward.”

 

“I understand that you’re not happy with my involvement in this job, but I would prefer it if you weren’t quite so intent on criticizing everything I do,” Peter snaps.

 

Vespa’s eyes narrow just a little bit, like they do when she’s biting at her lip, thinking or anxious. “Sorry,” she says. She almost drops his hands, but sees a little panic cross his face when she loosens her grip, and thinks better of it. “Don’t take it personally.”

 

Peter snorts, disbelieving, prepared to argue, but Vespa speaks again before he does.

 

“I’m serious,” she says, a hint of a growl under her voice. “Look, this job is important to me. You might not realize it, but I’m putting a lot of trust in you with this, and I just need you to get that that’s… it’s difficult for me. And I really wouldn’t mind you putting in the effort to make it just a little bit easier.”

 

He shuts his mouth. “Very well then,” he says at last. “I apologize for—” being involved. Being an idiot. “Upsetting you.”

 

Vespa just rolls her eyes, and they settle back into their prior silence. Meanwhile, Vespa keeps looking past Peter, over his shoulder to keep an eye on Rob. He passes them once or twice as they make their slow journey around the rink, never noting her staring. He rounds the corner once more, and with a glint in her eye, Vespa slips the tiny camera into Peter’s hand.

 

“You’re gonna want to brace yourself,” she says.

 

Peter’s eyes widen. He looks over his shoulder to where Rob is coming towards them, skating backwards, fast. “Oh no.”

 

Vespa grabs him by the elbows and pulls them a little ways farther away from the wall, putting them almost directly in Rob’s path. Then she digs a toepick into the ice and pivots quickly, swinging Peter around and then shoving him out in front of Rob. To his credit, he manages to stay on his feet, gliding more than he stumbles, but it doesn’t stop the inevitable.

 

“Look out!” Vespa shouts, feigning shock as Rob flies toward them. He turns, starting to curve away, but it’s too late. Everything slows, and Peter swallows a scream that synchronizes with the shrieking scrape of Rob’s skates against the ice as he tries to stop. Peter crashes into him and Rob trips over the impact, only barely stopping himself from collapsing on top of Peter entirely as they fall. The sound of Peter hitting the ice seems to echo, buzzing through his bones, and evidently it was loud enough to attract concern, because Vespa is on one knee beside him, and Rob is crouched over him, a slight look of horror on his face, and the skaters around them seem to have been silenced.

 

“Watch where the hell you’re going,” he snaps, but even in that flash of anger he’s reaching out a hand to help Peter up. The sharpness starts to fade from his voice as he says, “Are you alright?”

 

“I— I’m so sorry,” Peter stutters, sounding more dazed than he really feels. He grabs Rob’s arm, but he’s in a poor position to be pulling himself up, and before he can really try, Rob is bracing his other hand behind Peter’s shoulder and helping him to his feet.

 

“Sorry’s not important, are you _alright?_ ” Rob says, and that sharpness hasn’t left his voice entirely, but it’s transformed into something that’s more like concern than anger.

 

“Yes, I’m fine.” His voice is a little unsteady, and so is he, so he feigns slipping forward and presses a hand against Rob’s chest, securing the camera to his coat in the process. Rob’s grip on his arm and his shoulder is gentle and strong, and Peter can’t help but wonder—if he were to fall again—just how much closer he might hold him. Instead, he finally looks up to meet Rob’s eyes, and they’re sharp like his voice, and coal-dark, but kind.

 

“Thank you,” Peter says. Then he pulls back his hands to brush back his hair and readjust his clothing. “Maybe this is rude of me to say, but I do hope I don’t run into you again.”

 

Rob cracks a smile at that, and claps Peter on the shoulder before running his hand through the russet wave of his hair. “Probably for the best. I’m Rob.”

 

“Indigo,” Peter says, without thinking. “My name’s Indigo.”

 

Rob raises an eyebrow. “Pretty,” he says.

 

“ _Very_ ,” Peter says, and the way that his gaze flits down to Rob’s lips with that is only half a conscious choice.

 

Rob blushes, charming and so very satisfying. “Be careful out there, Indigo,” he says, before skating off.

 

Peter grins radiantly. Vespa seems less enthusiastic. “You fell pretty hard there, Indy. I think we’re done for the day,” she says for the sake of anyone around them who might overhear. He pouts, but lets her pull him back to the exit.

 

There’s a simmering anger about her as she returns their skates and stalks back to the car.

 

“Is there anything else we should—”

 

“I think you’ve done enough,” she says. Peter’s upset her, though he’s not sure how. He stays silent through the rest of the ride back to the lakehouse, for fear of making things worse.

 

When they arrive, he goes up to his room immediately, with the easy excuse of checking on the camera they’d planted. It takes a few long minutes more than it should for him to bury his residual anxiety from the day, though, and he hardly spends more than a moment watching the camera feed before he throws himself into something more involved. His disguise still has to be put together, after all. He becomes so entrenched in his work that hours later he hardly hears his door creak open.

 

When he finally looks up, he startles at the sight of Buddy standing in his doorway, still struggling every time he sees her to suppress his starstruck awe. It’s difficult to keep his wits about him when he’s so caught up in the fear and excitement of working with Buddy and Vespa—he’d proven as much today talking to Vespa at the ice rink—but he has to remind himself that the job is his first priority.

 

“You know, you could relax for an evening; I’d hate for you to overwork yourself,” Buddy says, interrupting his thoughts. “Vespa and I have been taking the liberty of exploring our hosts’ liquor cabinet, very nice selection there. Come share a drink with us.”

 

Peter stops and considers the offer. It’s ridiculous for a million reasons; Vespa would hardly want to talk to him, for one, and the job she’d hired him for was incredibly important from the way she and Vespa speak about it. If anything, she should be worried he’s not pulling his weight, or that he has ulterior motives, spending as much time hiding in his room alone as he is. She hardly knows him, after all. But then maybe that’s the point: _knowing him._ He remembers their game of Rangian street poker, and that first conversation in the car, her eyes burning holes through him, trying to bring his secrets to light. Of course. It’s practically the oldest trick in the book, pouring drinks until someone’s suggestible enough to let slip all the things they wouldn’t say sober. He puts on a pleasant smile for her, not looking up from his work, and says, “Another night, maybe.”

 

He expects she’ll leave, then, but instead she saunters through the door to sit down next to him, peering over his shoulder with curious, prying eyes as he enhances an image on his computer. “What is it you’re so busy with, then?”

 

“I haven’t figured out how to hack into the servers holding copies of the workers’ retina scans,” he explains. “At least not without the risk of tipping off the security teams, so I’ve had to piece it together by hand from the images I’ve compiled to make the contact lenses.”

 

“Sounds dreadfully tedious,” she says, and takes a long sip from the cocktail glass she’s holding.

 

“Only as much as any other forgery,” he says. “Which is what you hired me for, after all.”

 

“Good. I’m glad that won’t be a problem for you, then. And I do appreciate you avoiding any unnecessary risks. I trust you’ll continue to do so in the future,” she says pointedly.

 

He frowns, unsure of her meaning, but doesn’t ask for clarification, just narrows his eyes and focuses more intently on reconstructing the vivid darkness of Rob’s retinas.

 

“Vespa seems to think you’re rather taken with him,” Buddy says. He’s not sure if he’s imagining the hint of a sly smile in her voice.

 

“Well, I am—among other things—an art thief; I know how to appreciate beauty when I see it,” he says, flippantly, burying a twinge of embarrassment and annoyance.

 

“Charming. Are you going to use that line the next time you decide to flirt with our mark?”

 

Is that why she’s here? He almost sighs with relief; he’d half-thought she suspected him of trying to sabotage the mission some other way, not over something as silly as a crush.

 

“I hardly see the harm in flirting with him; we’re going to have to break into his apartment anyway, and if I can convince him to invite me in, then that’s all the better because we won’t have to worry about any security.” He sets aside his computer. “Besides, if Vespa’s so upset about it then maybe she shouldn’t have shoved me into his arms in the first place.”

 

Buddy sets a hand on his shoulder, and he quickly shakes it off, struck by a memory of Mag and the rare serious moments after a job gone poorly. On those occasions, he would offer stern guidance in place of his usual crude humor. Buddy folds her hands in her lap with an expression of vague distaste. “Sometimes making an impression on someone’s memory has worse consequences than making one on their security system,” she says.

 

“I’d have to let the past catch up to me to see those consequences, wouldn’t I?” he grins.

 

Buddy’s dark expression quells his smile. “You’re not seducing our target,” she reiterates, “Because for one thing, it’s an unnecessary risk for all of us if you get too involved with him, and for another—” Buddy says this with a soft severity “—you shouldn’t get too comfortable breaking hearts, darling, or you’ll be liable to break your own, one day.”

 

“I won’t.” He can hear the irritation slipping into his voice. “I’m not nearly so invested in him I’d consider doing anything that would jeopardize our work over him, but if you’re so concerned about it, then fine. I won’t speak to him again.”

 

“Good,” she says.

 

“I know what I’m doing,” he can’t help adding.

 

Buddy looks like there’s some sharp remark waiting on her tongue, but whatever it is she doesn’t share it. “Very well. You have been hiding up here an awfully long time, though. Are you sure you don’t want to take a break and share a drink with us?”

 

“I appreciate the offer, but no thank you,” he says firmly.

 

“Alright. Good night, dear.” She sets a hand on his forearm for just a moment, then leaves without another word, closing the door behind her.

 

Peter keeps working on the retina scans late into the night. By the time he’s finished, Buddy and Vespa are nowhere to be found, presumably asleep in one of the house’s other lavish bedrooms, and that leaves the rest of the house free for him to explore. Recalling Buddy’s invitation, he decides to examine the selection in the liquor cabinet. A nice glass of wine out on the balcony, looking out over the lake seems a fair reward for a long night of work.

 

He pours himself a glass and steps outside, greeted immediately by an icy breeze. It rushes past him and into the warmth of the lakehouse, whipping about the silk drapes behind him as though they were heraldic flags. He drinks in that image for a moment, sees himself silhouetted against the low glow from the kitchen, staring out into the empty expanse, the frozen lake and the bare, scant trees surrounding it. But he closes the glass doors, and the drapes settle back against them, leaving him standing only in the pale light beneath Forsetti’s three moons.

 

Two of them are tiny, distant diamond-like asteroids trapped in orbit in Forsetti’s sky, but the third, Glitnir, hangs low and heavy over the barren forest in which the lakehouse resides. It’s close enough that he can see the twinkling lights of cities, of a million lives, a hundred thousand miles away. Close enough, too, that he can see the craters that mar its surface, in the shape of ancient meteor impacts, and in the shape of war, some of those cities reduced to utter ruin. There’s no atmosphere on the moon, he’s certain—no clouds to coat the sky, nothing to obscure the view of satellite tyrants with a vice-like grip on the lives of the people there.

 

The part of him that is always Peter Nureyev, underneath the names he hides in, searches the sky instinctively, aches to escape the vulnerability of standing beneath its emptiness, even though he’s not on Brahma, not on that moon that Forsetti fires its own lasers down onto. And even moreso, Peter Nureyev aches with the memory of all his abandoned heroic fantasies. He’ll be leaving Forsetti again before the month is up. Certainly, there’s nothing he can do for the burgeoning revolution on the planet’s moon, but he can’t help but feel he’s turned his back on them before even knowing of them. That for all his aspirations of being the name people would cry out in their hour of need, he’s become just another petty thief hiding in the shadows, stealing only for his own glory—a feeble little light no one else will ever see.

 

No one will be there to see it burn out, either.

 

He picks up his glass of wine. The one he chose is imported from Ganymede, more antique than vintage, a luxury probably worth thousands of creds. When he drinks, it tastes like rot in his mouth. He drinks it anyway. The warmth it spreads through him, the slight flush in his cheeks, does less than he hoped to ward off the chill of the night. The cold has settled into him with more tenacity than he expected, and he’s on the verge of shivering. He doesn’t go back inside until he’s truly shaking, caught up in the miserable spell of the night sky as he is, and when he does he downs another glass of wine, willing its taste to match it’s value. It never does.

 

When he goes to bed, he lies awake until the warm haze of wine leaves him, and another hour after. In the inky black, he imagines the ceiling as an endless void of sky. He imagines a man with kind, dark eyes. He tugs the sheets tighter around him and imagines the warmth of being held in his arms, and he imagines a name, _“Peter Nureyev,”_ whispered reverently in the space between two pairs of lips, a place where lovers share secrets.

 

When he sleeps, he is alone in his dreams.


	5. Chapter 5

A few days pass relatively without incident; he speaks with Buddy and Vespa only in passing. Lurks in the attic, keeps to dustier old hallways, and even sneaks out a window to explore the woods surrounding the lakehouse once. For the most part, his evasiveness doesn’t seem to bother his partners in crime. Buddy will stop him when she sees him, and drill him for updates on his progress with Rob, and he’ll give his reports, trying to quell down his desperate, wide-eyed longing for her approval. Whether or not she can see it anyway, he can never tell, and she only ever gives a satisfied nod before he hurriedly ducks away to avoid any more questions. Vespa, for her part, is just as cagey as he is. She keeps to the same back routes through the house that he’s found, though he’s careful not to be seen when she’s passing through. He catches snippets of phone calls, sharp and strained words in a language he doesn’t understand. He assumes it’s their mysterious employer fussing over the details of the heist, but that doesn’t explain the way Vespa’s voice goes soft with emotion, sometimes, when she speaks to them. He remembers her saying this job was important to her, at the ice rink with that strange severity in her tone. He tries not to let it trouble him.

 

More importantly, he keeps a careful eye on Rob, through all manners of surveillance available to him. The camera stuck on his coat tracks a consistent route from his apartment into the capitol building every morning, and Peter commits it to memory. He intercepts messages from Rob’s boss, staying alert for any changes in routine. He tracks security cameras on street corners and in businesses Rob frequents, learns the rhythm of his gait, the way he takes his coffee, the smiles he shows to friends and strangers. He spends a probably irresponsible amount of time examining Rob’s and his friends’ social media accounts, for the sake of improving his impersonation, of course.

 

Rob is not the kind of person Peter Nureyev could love. He has too much money and too little sense, a well-intentioned sort of ignorance about the world, and just enough influence that that will surely have dreadful consequences someday. Certainly, he is not the kind of person who could love Peter Nureyev back, but to love Peter Nureyev would be to know him, and Peter had long since discarded his ability to trust anyone with knowledge of his self.

 

Rob is not the kind of person Peter Nureyev could love, but he has kind eyes and a dancer’s frame and a way of drawing people in and keeping them, making new connections with but a word or a glance. If one thing is clear from Peter’s research, it’s that Rob’s social circle reaches wide and runs deep. People are happy to be in his life, mostly because his life is a happy one. And it’s clear from his research, that’s not a life Peter Nureyev could ever belong in, but he can imagine people who do. Indigo Viceroy, for one, and others, names who could be happy and foolish and spend Saturday nights drinking with Rob and his fellow interns, and Sunday mornings nursing a hangover and a warm cup of coffee in his bed, and Summer nights riding shotgun in his car, laughing and unafraid under clear skies.

 

He envies these imagined selves, not just for the ease of their imagined lives, or the foolishness they’re allowed, or even their joy, but for how uncomplicated they are. None of them have ever buried their names under foreign stars, or carried one with them, when it won’t sit still in it’s grave. Peter Nureyev has.

 

All these thoughts and more distract him as he searches for a record of Rob’s fingerprints that he won’t have to hack into government servers to access. Of course, he’ll be able to do it the night before the heist, taking the scans directly from Rob’s hands, but he’ll be busy enough, and it’s better to come already prepared.

 

He’s found himself a corner in an unused section of the attic to work in, and plans to stay there as long as he can, wanting just to be alone with his thoughts.

 

He finds himself interrupted, though, jumping when the hatch in the floor creaks open and Vespa hauls herself up through it. She sits on the edge, letting her legs dangle down into the room below, and spares a glance for the ladder that was meant to lead up into the hatch, shoved into a corner by Peter in the hopes of ensuring his solitude. Then she locks eyes with him and his heart stops.

 

“You know, it’s a lot less dusty in the other attic,” is all she says.

 

He blinks, speechless for a moment, then collects himself. “Yes, but it’s quieter here. Usually.”

 

“Sorry to interrupt your sulking, then. Buddy made pasta.”

 

“I’ll have some later.”

 

“And she wants to talk to you,” Vespa says pointedly.

 

Peter’s mouth goes dry, fearing he’s done something wrong, but he just nods and rises from his corner, replacing the ladder and following once Vespa has dropped back down to the floor below. In the kitchen, Buddy tosses the pasta with olive oil and mixes in a host of roasted vegetables. Vespa sneaks a fork into the pot for a bite before Buddy divides it onto plates, and Buddy swats her hand away affectionately.

 

Peter stands nervously by the table. “Did you need me for something, Buddy?”

 

“Yes,” she says, not turning to look at him. She hands Vespa a plate, and brings two more over to the table. “I need you to stop sneaking around and hiding from me.”

 

Vespa perches on the countertop, resting her plate of food against her knees, and watches the conversation unfold.

 

“I— I’m sorry,” Peter says.

 

“Is something wrong?”

 

“No.” He looks down.

 

“Then whatever are you so worried about? If you’re this skittish now, when we’re still a week away from the job, I’d hate to see what you’re like when there’s actually something at stake. You’ll be caught before we even get started if you’re acting like this around our mark’s coworkers.”

 

“It won’t be an issue, I promise,” he says quickly. Of course it won’t. The government workers are just more marks to move around; none of them have held up the most secure banks on the Outer Rim, or stolen the crown jewels of Akna, or fooled law enforcement across the galaxy.

 

Buddy frowns, and taps a finger against his chin, urging him to meet her eyes. “I don’t need you to tell me it won’t be an issue _then_ , darling. I need to know what’s wrong _now_.”

 

“I—” he can feel himself blushing, though it’s hidden well enough by the foundation caked onto his face. He searches for a lie, and comes up empty. “Sorry.”

 

“You’ve already said that, try something new.”

 

He raises his hands up into the air and gestures as if they’ll make his point for him. Then, giving up, drops them back onto the table. “I don’t really know how to explain it except…”

 

“Go on?”

 

“I— you’re _Buddy Aurinko_.”

 

“Am I now?” she says with a hint of amusement.

 

Peter groans and drops his head into his hands. “That’s not— I just mean—”

 

“Oh darling, you were so eloquent when we first met. What’s happened?”

 

If he were to blush any more, he wouldn’t have enough blood left to circulate through the rest of his body. “I only mean that it’s intimidating, working with the two of you. I assumed that would be obvious, given…”

 

“Given the way you were following around Vespa and I for so long?” Like a lost little puppy.

 

He nods. Buddy sits down across from him, and Vespa joins them at the table, eyeing him a little suspiciously. He picks at his pasta, first just to stopper up the conversation, then with more enthusiasm once he actually tastes it. “This is really good,” he says.

 

“Thank you, dear.”

 

Sharing a meal together doesn’t quite ease the tension that’s been lingering over the lakehouse, but it helps, even with the way Buddy’s still looking Peter over like she’s trying to put together a puzzle. Finally, she says, “I suppose you weren’t joking about that autograph, then.”

 

“Of course not,” he mumbles, staring down at his plate.

 

Buddy laughs, but before she can say anything more, Vespa comes to his rescue. She points her fork towards him and says, “You carry an awful lot of knives. Any good with them?”

 

He recalls the morning after he’d first come to the lakehouse, worried for a moment that she might have noticed the knife he’d kept under his pillow. But that wasn’t possible—he’d left it in its hiding place, never pulling it out where she could see it. If he had, he might not still be here. Vespa hadn’t taken kindly to him, and surely she’d take even less kindly to any threats he’d be foolish enough to offer. No, there must have been a couple in the pockets of his suit coat. He tries to remember which ones those had been, but he’s never had a good memory for the things that end up in his pockets.

 

“I get by,” he says.

 

“Show me.”

 

“Oh Vespa, please, not at the dinner table,” Buddy says in mock complaint.

 

Vespa pushes her chair out and stands up. “I’m done. You?”

 

Peter glances down at his empty plate and stands up as well. “You want to do this now?”

 

Vespa nods, pulls a pair of knives out of one of the countless pockets in her black cargo pants, and tosses one at him. He flinches, and is quick to catch it by the hilt instead of the blade, before realizing it’s a plastic training knife.

 

They leave the kitchen for the front atrium, and Vespa carries away a couple chairs and tables she fears might get damaged in the sparring match. Buddy watches from the other room.

 

“Be careful around that piano,” she calls.

 

Peter twirls the knife experimentally, feeling its weight, shifting his grip. Familiar practice exercises he learned from Mag so many years ago. Vespa watches, noting his technique and his comfort with the weapon, and finally says, “You must’ve had a good teacher.”

 

Peter’s face falls to a vicious glower without his willing it to, feeling this to be just another prying question, another angle on the pieces of his past he won’t share.

 

Instead, she says, “Sorry. I won’t ask.”

 

Peter blinks in surprise, and in the moment it takes him to process Vespa’s sympathy she swings her knife at him.

 

He dodges, but doesn’t get his bearings quick enough to block or retaliate before she strikes at him again. Once he finally gets an opening to strike back, she easily slips out of his path, grabs his arm to divert the hit, and twists it, nearly sending him sprawling backwards onto the floor. Instead, he drops to his knees and slips his arm from her grasp, then shifts his grip on the practice knife to land a hit against her side. It’s a solid hit. Vespa stumbles back, and Peter has to stop himself from apologizing, because she’s coming at him again. He leaps to his feet and sidesteps, then puts her on the defensive with a series of quick jabs. She blocks him almost effortlessly though, and uses her slight stature to her advantage, ducking under his attacks and moving around him faster than he can follow. He turns, and finds his legs swept out from under him as a blow between his ribs knocks the wind out of him, and then he’s lying on the floor, trying to tell his lungs how to function again as he stares up at her.

 

“Need a break before round two?”

 

He nods and pulls himself to his feet, still partially slumped over. He keeps the act up longer than he really needs to recover, and then makes a bold strike he hopes will catch her off guard. It works, though not as well as he hopes, and it’s not long before their second sparring match is concluding with another win for Vepsa. Then a third, a fourth, and Peter calls off the fight mid-way through the fifth.

 

“Where the hell did you learn to fight like that?” Peter asks, gasping for breath. He sits down on the floor.

 

Vespa grins and drops back onto a couch, taking a long moment to catch her own breath before explaining. It’s gratifying to know that she is, if not as exhausted as he is, still winded by the fight. “Grew up on the front lines of the war. I worked in the field hospitals, mostly, and they didn’t have the supplies to spare to teach us how to use any of the serious weaponry, so instead I learned how to bring a knife to a gunfight.”

 

Vespa pushes her sweat-streaked hair out of her face, looking a little weary from the sparring match, but still ready to take on the world. Peter can imagine it—Vespa, behind enemy lines and armed with just a knife, fighting her way through and making it out with barely a scratch on her. Walking across the battlefield unscathed. It’s an impossible image, but Buddy and Vespa have been doing the impossible for years. “Did you?” he asks reverently.

 

She tilts her head to the side.

 

“In the war. Bring a knife to a gunfight.”

 

She snorts. “No. Not in the war, too busy patching people up. After that, though…” She frowns and joins him on the floor. Twirls her practice knife to keep her hands busy and her eyes off of Peter. “The Outer Rim government was too busy with the war to have the time or resources to help our planet recover after the Solar forces were done with it. In the mess left after the war, political parties started gaining power that looked to places like Brahma for inspiration. Don’t have to explain what that was like to you. I fought with the resistance.”

 

Peter nods. They’re both quiet for a long moment, remembering. Different planets, different wars, but the same enemy.

 

“We lost.” Vespa’s voice is hoarse with emotion. It surprises Peter to realize he’s heard that tone from her before, in those snatches of conversation he caught when she was on the comms. She spoke a different language then, but the feeling is identical. “I was lucky; I got out before things got too bad. A lot of the people I fought with didn’t.”

 

Peter doesn’t have to ask what happened to the people who didn’t get out. Vespa is close enough for them to lean into each other, shoulder knocking against shoulder, and the point of contact is a warm, steadying reminder that they’re alive, that they made it out, whatever ghosts may haunt them now.

 

Then Vespa pulls back, and packs away her practice knives, and reaches out a hand to help Peter back up to his feet. He takes it.

 

“I’ll give you another shot if you want to spar again tomorrow,” she offers, and Peter accepts, and they return to the kitchen to help Buddy wash and put away dishes. Buddy and Vespa tease him without malice for his starstruck admiration, and that night they share a bottle of wine, the three of them, and it tastes sweet. The doors to the balcony stay shut, but with the curtains pulled back they can look out at the snow falling from the clouded sky over the frozen lake from the warmth of the kitchen, and the lonely cold outside feels so far away.

 

When he goes to bed, he lies awake for a time with an aching warmth in his chest, because he had forgotten what it was like, not to be alone.

 

When he sleeps, he sleeps deeply, and he doesn’t dream.


	6. Chapter 6

It’s four days until the heist, when Peter decides it’s finally time to dye his hair. He’s been thinking about the soft russet shade of Rob’s hair, looking at pictures of it in different lights, trying to pick a shade to match it. He mentions it one morning, and Vespa’s eyes light up at the idea.

 

She drags her fingers through her own hair and says, “Been meaning to redo my roots, will you pick up the dye for me too?”

 

She sends him out with their stolen car in search of a high end hair bleach and developer, and a shade called Demetrian Green, and when he returns, she and Buddy have converted the kitchen into a hair salon, with a tarp spread across the floor and a full length mirror brought in, the table shoved off into the corner of the room and covered with hairdressing supplies.

 

Vespa is sitting on the table, already sectioning off her hair and preparing to bleach it, while Buddy pulls up a three dimensional projection of a recent picture of Rob. She turns it in her view, examining the details of his haircut, then directs Peter to a stool sitting in front of the mirror.

 

“We’ll cut it first, then dye it,” she says, and selects an array of combs and scissors.

 

“I can do this myself, you know—”

 

“Nonsense, darling, cutting your own hair is a recipe for disaster. You should have seen the haircuts Vespa went through before we were together.”

 

“Oh shut up,” Vespa complains. “You fell in love with me when I had that stupid haircut.”

 

“So you know I must really love you,” Buddy retorts cheekily. She blows a kiss toward Vespa, then starts combing Peter’s hair. He decides not to protest any further.

 

If he’s honest, he doesn’t really mind. It’s nice, actually. He lets Buddy fuss over his hair and after she snips the first lock of his it, he relaxes into it, trusting that she knows what she’s doing and letting her move him wherever she needs him. He even closes his eyes for a spell. He listens to Buddy and Vespa tease each other lightheartedly over old arguments, laughing together, goading him into playing tiebreaker for these tired debates. It’s new and familiar all at once, being drawn into their routine as though he’s always belonged.

 

Eventually Vespa puts on some medical soap opera in the background while she works, and it stays on as the bleach works its way into their hair, as they rinse it out, and as they start applying the dye. Once the dye is in and set to process, Vespa and Buddy move to the couch to watch, and Peter hesitantly follows suit, sitting at one end while Buddy and Vespa curl up together on the other. Buddy and Vespa keep a running commentary on the stream, having seen the episodes before. Peter tries to follow the show and their conversation, but gets hopelessly lost in the tangle of melodrama and complicated workplace relationships in the hospital it’s set at. So lost, in fact, he hardly notices Vespa shifting around to sprawl across the couch, gradually encroaching on his space until her legs are lying across his lap. She stays there as the credits roll for the episode, and she turns off the stream, apparently bored with it.

 

“How much longer, Bud?” she asks.

 

Buddy checks her watch. “Still half an hour to go,” she says, and Vespa sighs.

 

In search of other entertainment, Buddy says to Peter, “Tell me a story, darling. I hardly think it’s fair that you know every job we’ve ever done and keep all of yours a secret.”

 

“I wouldn’t say _every_ job,” Peter says. “Besides, if you wanted a story you should have asked for one when we played Rangian street poker.”

 

Buddy rolls her eyes. “Tell me a story and I’ll tell you how I got into the business of crime.”

 

Peter purses his lips. “Fine. But you first, I need to decide what to tell.”

 

“Alright, if you insist.” She begins. “I told my father I wanted to be a bank robber when I was twelve. He was a prison warden, but his inmates were quite fond of him, and when he was especially busy he left me in the care of some of the more trustworthy ones. I’ve always loved a good story, and already being in prison, most of his inmates had little to lose by telling their secrets, so they would tell me about all sorts of glamorous heists to keep me entertained—some that they’d been a part of, some that they’d only heard about out on the solar planets, and some—they said—that had never been done. Some that were impossible. Those ones were always my favorites. I wanted to be the one to prove them wrong. Do you know what my father said when I told him that?”

 

“I imagine he wasn’t terribly happy to hear about your criminal aspirations,” Peter says.

 

“I imagine not. I told him I wanted to be a thief, and he told me he hoped I wasn’t looking to his inmates as role models, and when I asked him why, he said, ‘Because all of them got caught.’ He said, ‘Buddy, you can do anything you want to do, so long as you do it better than they did.’ So when I was sixteen I broke into the most secure vault we had on the tiny, frozen moon that we lived on, stole a diamond necklace he kept in a safety deposit box there, and wore it to school the next day. The bank never realized it was missing.”

 

“What did he say when he saw the necklace?” Peter asks.

 

“That he’d have to find me a new birthday present.” Buddy grins, and Peter laughs. “Your turn now,” she says.

 

“Alright,” Peter sighs, and says, “There was a family on Brahma that was descended from some of the early colonizers—old money, used to own half the planet. When I was thirteen, my partner and I robbed their home the night they were hosting some massive birthday party. I had scaled the side of the building to get into a second floor bedroom, where I was cracking a safe, while my partner was downstairs in the main ballroom, making sure no one would leave and complicate my part in the job, and making off with some priceless heirloom right under their noses. Everything had been going perfectly, and I was all ready to make my getaway, when suddenly I could hear voices shouting downstairs, and then someone running down the hall, and then the hostess burst into the bedroom and collapsed on the bed, hardly five feet away from me, sobbing that the entire party was ruined. So there I was, in the closet with the safe, terrified that my partner had been caught and any second the hostess would turn around and see me too.

 

“I climbed up to the top shelf of the closet to keep myself out of view, and I was nearly about to try fitting myself into one of the enormous hat boxes there when I realized there was a hatch in the ceiling leading to the attic, and with nowhere else to go I snuck into the attic there, and made my own way out by carving a hole into the exterior wall. I thought I’d have to steal a car, and get back to our safehouse on my own to figure out what happened and what to do next, but my partner was exactly where he’d said we’d meet, with the catering van as our getaway car. When I asked what had gone wrong, he said that nothing had, and he pointed to the back of the van, where right next to the thing he’d meant to steal was a massive cardboard box, and when I opened it up, I saw that he’d stolen the _entire_ seven-tiered cake. And he just said—”

 

_Happy birthday, Pete!_

 

Buddy tilts her head, and says, “Well?”

 

“Happy birthday,” Peter says, but the words come out sad and deflated. Peter trails off, and the quiet that follows is cold and steely. He knows that Buddy and Vespa recognize the unspoken bitterness, his three of swords.

 

It hadn’t been his birthday, not really. Peter and Mag hadn’t known when his actual birthday was. But that day had been the anniversary of the day Mag had pulled him off the streets, a tribute to the love that Mag had for him, the years he’d spent raising him. Now the date stands as nothing more than a monument to his lies in Peter’s mind.

 

Vespa interrupts his thoughts and says, “One time on my birthday I got too close when a land mine went off and wound up with shrapnel all up my leg. It fucking sucked.”

 

“I— I’m sorry, that sounds awful,” Peter stammers, startled.

 

Vespa only shrugs. “There’s a couple bits still in there.” She raises up one leg in front of his face, and sure enough, poking out from under the pant leg, there’s a deep scar and a dark piece of metal beneath the surface of the skin. “Got hauled back to the field hospital and some friends of mine fixed me up. They said the anaesthesia they used made me really loopy though, and I tried to make them sing to me while they were working on my leg. They never let me live it down, either; any time someone got pulled in from the battlefield with a shrapnel wound they’d come running to wish me a happy birthday.”

 

“I think the lesson here,” Buddy says, “is that you should never go into war or medicine—”

 

“—because they make your sense of humor gory as hell,” Vespa finishes for her.

 

“Exactly that,” Buddy says.

 

And Peter laughs, realizing how quick they were to drag him away from his thoughts of Mag, without once prying into his past.

 

“I think the dye should be about done now,” Buddy then says.

 

Peter washes it out of his hair in the kitchen sink and towels it dry, then spends several minutes in front of the mirror, captivated by the strangeness of its new color and length. It’s a perfect match for Rob’s; he’s grateful for Buddy’s help, unsure he could have done such a good job on his own. As he runs his fingers through the soft copper strands, Buddy comes over to stand with him, and looking into the mirror, she holds a strand of her hair up beside Peter’s and grins.

 

“Now we match,” she says, and he looks into their reflections and smiles back, a soft and honest thing. She drops her hair and puts an arm around his shoulders as he leans in closer the gesture comfortable, almost familial. Buddy closes her eyes for just a moment, but Peter keeps looking into the mirror, wanting to hold onto the image of the two of them like this forever.


	7. Chapter 7

They drive into the city in the evening, just before starset, to give them enough time to get into Rob’s apartment before he comes home. Cloaked from view and high above the skyline, they can see the city glowing pale grey beneath them, beautiful and pristine with a fresh coating of snow. Peter, though, keeps his eyes fixed on Glitnir rising over the horizon, the distant rippling crust of ruins and impact craters. He wonders if he will ever see a place as beautiful as this city, as beautiful as New Kinshasa, that doesn’t hide some horrors just outside of its sweet pastel glow.

 

Their car leaves them on the roof of Rob’s apartment building. Peter waits, stun knife in hand, by the door that opens onto the roof, keeping watch while Buddy and Vespa trace the perimeter and affix a cable to the edge directly over the window of Rob’s apartment. He prods the thick coat of ice on the roof with his toe. It’s a risky move, rappelling down from the roof in weather like this; all the ice and snow makes it difficult to secure the equipment to the roof, nevermind the sharp gusts of wind that ebb and flow with so little warning. He knows that, and Buddy and Vespa do too, double and triple checking the mechanisms.

 

It’s a pointless mercy, picking this plan instead of letting Peter find a way into Rob’s apartment, but he knows now that mercy is what it is, not distrust. Buddy won’t believe him when he says that a pretty face like Rob’s means nothing to him. Mag had always told him his heart was too soft for his own good. They’re wrong, both of them, but he’ll be gone in a matter of days, and for all he wishes otherwise it won’t matter what Buddy thinks of him then.

 

He watches Vespa secure her harness, then reach up to tangle her hands in Buddy’s hair to pull her down into a kiss.

 

“For luck,” he hears her say just over the sound of the wind, a half-smile curling up from her lips, and then she disappears over the edge.

 

Buddy shoots him a glance, soon after Vespa vanishes, but Peter can’t read her expression, so he checks the door once more to avoid the intensity of her gaze, and doesn’t look back until he can hear the cable Vespa had descended with winding back up into the rappelling device. Buddy disassembles the equipment and packs it all away, but even with Vespa safely inside the building, she stays right where she is, kneeling at the precipice. It’s a long silent moment, frozen on the rooftop as the minutes tick by, and Peter tugs his coat closer around him, though it does little to stop a shiver from seizing him every so often. Buddy is as still as marble, a natural part of the landscape of this city.

 

Then she stands, presumably at some signal from Vespa, and strides past him to the door, reaching for the handle just as Vespa throws it open with a victorious grin.

 

She’s set the security cameras on a loop, and disabled the alarm on the rooftop door, and a little luck lets them pass through the halls of the apartment building without running into anyone else. Vespa swipes them into Rob’s apartment. It’s different, being here. Peter had seen it through brief glimpses from the camera he’d put onto Rob’s coat, but there was something those snatches of film couldn’t convey. Somehow, between the clean, gallery-like way the photos and paintings are displayed on the walls and the arrangements of minimalist furniture, the apartment still feels lived in. Maybe it’s only because he’s seen so much of Rob’s life by now, but it feels infinitely more personal than any of the myriad hotels Peter’s stayed in, or even than the lakehouse, so clearly meant for hosting guests and summer galas. Not like a home. Not like this.

 

Rob’s body lies motionless on the couch. Peter doesn’t look. He doesn’t need to.

 

“The sedative should keep him under for a good twenty-four hours,” Vespa says. “I’ll be keeping an eye on him through the night to make sure there are no complications.”

 

He nods. “Good,” he says. “I’ll be busy.”

 

Peter doesn’t sleep that night, and he’s grateful that he doesn’t have the time to. He stays alone in Rob’s bedroom, working until the grey light of dawn sleeps through the windows, ignoring all the symbols of life, all of Rob’s personal effects, checking his reflection in the mirror and each time looking less and less like himself.

 

Peter hadn’t considered until he was wearing it, how ill-fitting this identity would be.

 

It’s perfect in every visible respect. When he applies the silicone facial prosthetics, he does so with the ease of someone who has practiced this exact maneuver forty-seven times, and when he moves his face beneath it, it shifts with a perfectly natural fluidity in an exact mimicry of Rob’s expressions. The mask is painted over with makeup that captures every detail from the tiny, just-healed acne scar on his forehead to the freckle an inch from the corner of his lip, and the subtle evidence of a man who has just taken ill—a hint of red about the nose, and deep, purple circles under his eyes. These, Peter barely had to paint on. He’s tired from the sleepless night. Rob’s suit is tailored to hang off his narrow frame in clean-cut lines, keeping the illusion of Rob’s more muscular stature. His hair rises up in a softly tousled wave, held in place with just a tiny bit of product, and it catches and casts copper-gold light coming in through the window. His fingerprints look as though they belong on his skin. He looks into the mirror and meets Rob’s warm black eyes.

 

He walks with the grace of a vain performer who never truly believes he has stepped off stage—in this respect, he has no need to imitate anyone but himself—and he sets his shoulders in a way that is confident without pretense and he smiles in a way that is just shy enough of imperious to be charming.

 

The costume will fool everyone but Peter, and he looks in the mirror and feels his heart sink, because in every other heist he’s had another person’s thoughts to slip into, some character to hide behind. He doesn’t know how to become the man standing before him, the one unconscious on the livingroom couch, and he can only hope he won’t need to.

 

He shakes his head to draw himself out of his thoughts. He’s been staring at his reflection for the past several minutes, knowing there was nothing more he could possibly do to make it feel right. He shouldn’t keep Buddy and Vespa waiting.

 

When he joins them in the livingroom, Buddy is sitting on the arm of the couch, watching Vespa as she paces anxiously. He hopes they’ve had a more restful night than he did, but suspects otherwise. Vespa locks eyes with him and falls still, and she breathes a slight sigh of relief. Buddy looks him over approvingly.

 

To Vespa, she says, “Are you sure?”

 

Vespa nods. There’s something clutched in her hand, and she holds it to her chest for a moment before tossing it to Peter without a word. It glimmers as it flies through the air, and lands heavy in his hand for something so small. He looks down to find that he’s holding a gold ring with a giant, shining diamond embedded in it.

 

“Don’t lose it,” Vespa says gruffly.

 

Peter stares, trying to wrap his head around it.

 

“It’s my good luck charm. Thought it might do you some good for the heist.”

 

“But…” he almost motions to give it back, but she stops him with a glance.

 

“I won’t need it; I trust myself more than I trust luck.”

 

“And luck more than you trust me?” he says with mock offense.

 

Vespa scowls, angry and… a little apologetic? “I trust you.”

 

Peter nods, silent and genuine this time.

 

“We will want it back, when we’re done,” Buddy steps in.

 

“Of course,” he says. “And if I do lose it, I assume you’ll have to kill me?”

 

Buddy shares a smile with him, and Vespa says again, more seriously, “Don’t lose it.” Then, the corner of her mouth tightening into a half-smile as well, she says, “I like you too much to kill you.”

 

Peter feels an unexpected warmth at that. “I’ll do my best to bring it back to you safely and avoid that fate. Is this an engagement ring?”

 

“A story I’ll tell you another time, dear,” Buddy says. “Are you ready?”

 

He slips the ring into his pocket, right next to the tiny chip that the fate of their operation rests on, the one containing the virus to take out the security systems, and nods.

*

Getting in is easy. Peter has walked this route in his mind a million times now, and thanks to the camera planted in Rob’s coat, there’s no guesswork as he walks through the capitol building’s doors and into the government offices. He gives only a cursory glance to the artwork on display around him as he passes through the museum, much as he wants to make one last guess at what the target of their crime is. He maintains his facade of weary familiarity. Presses his silicone fingerprints to one scanner and shows his contact lenses to another, and suppresses a triumphant grin when both find no flaw in his disguises. From there, it’s only a swipe of Rob’s keycard and a short elevator ride to the offices, and then the security server room.

 

The elevator takes him up to the twelfth floor.

 

The biggest challenge would be navigating Rob’s workplace relations, but the camera had informed him well enough of that too. Most of the older government workers don’t bother to address him. He’s a few minutes late, and many of his fellow interns have retreated to the offices. A close friend of Rob’s greets him with a wave and an enthusiastic grin.

 

Peter returns his coworker’s gesture with a weak little wave.

 

“You get up to anything exciting last night?” he says with a goading smile.

 

Peter shakes his head mournfully. “Passed out as soon as I got home. Nearly slept through my alarm this morning, too; I think I’m catching something,” he says. Rob’s vocal register is naturally lower than Peter’s, low enough that trying to imitate it hurts, and leaves certain cadences dropping from his sentences entirely. That serves him well today. With practice, he’d turned the forced replica into a hoarse and sickly whisper, making with his appearance a convincing cover for any oddities anyone might note about the way he’s acting.

 

His coworker winces sympathetically. “I’d say. You sound like hell, Roe—should call it in early today and get some rest.”

 

“I think I will,” Peter says with a grateful smile. His coworker claps him on the back and leaves him be, and he crosses to the offices. He slips easily into the room of a representative who’s out today, and closes the door behind him without locking it. Locking it would draw suspicion, and he’s confident no one will particularly care what Rob is busy with until at least another hour, and by then they’ll have much more pressing things to worry about.

 

He pushes a chair into the corner of the room, out of the view of any windows, and climbs up to inspect the ceiling. It’s made of large, metal tiles, with locked latches that allow them to be removed for maintenance. He easily unlatches one and pulls himself up into the cramped and dusty crawlspace above, pulling it shut behind him. With the light from his comms, he moves slowly and silently toward the ventilation tubes, following them back to their source, and soon he’s just above the server room. A motion scan from his comms tells him there’s no one in the room below. Perfect.

 

He drops down into the server room and makes his way to a monitor displaying the functionality of each alarm and security system. It’s a sea of blinking green lights and camera feed links, everything perfectly in order. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out the chip that will make it all collapse, calculated demolition. And it’s such a simple motion. He presses it against the screen.

 

The green lights blink out, one by one, with so little ceremony it’s as though they’re only falling asleep. The camera feeds keep rolling, but the red dots that mark them as recording vanish. Peter feels a satisfied smile creep across his face.

 

His safest bet would be to leave the security room now, before Buddy and Vespa make their entrance and someone realizes the alarms have been disabled. But here in the security room, cameras in the museum rolling without recording, he’ll have one last chance to see the spectacle of Buddy and Vespa’s criminal genius in action. Already, he’s thinking of how much he’ll miss the view from the shadows he’d coveted for so many months. More than that, he’ll miss them. Their company, the easy camaraderie of it. He’d almost call it friendship, if he didn’t know better. It will all be gone after this job; they won’t need him after this, and certainly won’t tolerate him clinging to their coattails any longer. He even thinks Buddy might be disappointed, to see him resort to that again.

 

He pulls up the main camera feed, focused on the largest display room in the museum. It shows four screens, one lens trained on each wall of the room. Peter only cares about the one trained on the painting on the back wall. It’s the centerpiece of the museum, a beautiful green landscape painted larger than a doorway. Behind it, there is a tunnel leading into the restoration rooms. In a few short moments the painting pulls apart from its frame, and Buddy and Vespa burst forth from the space behind it like a pair of sparkling fireworks. A couple well-placed stun blasts take out the museum security guards, and he knows they have a signal jammer working on every frequency, stopping any comms calls or any extraneous emergency signals outside of the now-defunct alarms. Word will rise up through the floors, reaching the government offices soon enough, but still no calls will reach any outside law enforcement, and in the time it takes to enact any emergency protocol, Buddy and Vespa will have taken everything they need. Peter guesses he has at least three minutes left before someone comes rushing in to check the security system servers.

 

Vespa vanishes quickly from his view. Likely, she’s going after their real target while Buddy makes a theatric distraction, stripping the walls bare. She says something to the crowd of museum-goers, and smiles, not unkindly, as they drop to the floor in terror. She keeps talking; he can imagine her blithe, rapid cadences as she sweeps through the room, skirts trailing behind her, pale blue like searing, swirling fire. He watches as she vanishes from one camera feed and quickly switches to another, burning a warpath through the museum.

 

And then he sees something on the screen that’s not meant to be there.

 

It starts with just a red dot, marked somewhere on the twelfth floor. His heart stops a fraction of a second before the alarms blare.

 

From there, everything happens faster than he can think: the door to the server room bursts open. He’s seen instantly. Trips sideways and stumbles behind a shelf of computer equipment to avoid the laser fire coming at him. Stumbles, then bolts for the door. He barely sees the laser that hits him, only feels white-hot pain exploding through his arm, and of all things that’s what saves him, because the hit makes him drop to his knees so that the next blast misses him, whistling through the air just next to his ear. He clutches at the burn on his left bicep, feels his muscles seizing up—that arm is useless now—but he lurches back to his feet because there’s nothing else he can do. Somehow, even one-handed, he wrestles a stun knife from one guard’s belt, and in a sudden flash of plasma, while he’s too close to hit with a blaster, he cuts them both down.

 

He has to find a way out, but as the alarm is raised for the workers’ evacuation he realizes that won’t work anymore; the prosthetics on his face are peeling away after the fight, his disguise ruined, and even if that weren’t the case, his singed clothes mark him, as does his panicked expression. He needs to compose himself, but all the lights on this floor flash red with the alarm, and all Peter can see is the blood-tinted glow of the Guardian Angel System, his brain skipping back to Brahma on a glitching loop.

 

They’d betrayed him.

 

He doesn’t know where the thought comes from, but he can’t think it through. He can’t even draw a breath. They must have set him up—how else could the twelfth floor alarm have been tripped? The virus would cut security in the museum and draw attention instead to an intruder in the government offices, making an easy heist for them and simultaneously getting rid of the thorn in their side who’d been tailing them for months.

 

Peter’s heart sinks, like a cinderblock through a river, and all his hopes tied to it. He should have known better. After Mag, he should have known better than to think that anyone could see him as something more than a tool to be used, a weapon to be wielded against the law for their own purposes, never mind his own intentions. He tries to crush down the feeling of it, but all those lost years of thinking he was loved when really he was just lied to, they swell up inside him and turn bitter with hate.

 

If he can’t trust anyone, he can rely on himself. That’s all that will keep him alive. And he needs to get out of here alive.

 

He pulls himself from the doorway of the server room, clutching the stun knife in his hand, and searches for an exit. The elevator is shut down. If he tries to join the crowd evacuating the building he’ll surely be caught. Already, more guards are rounding the corner, and they’ve spotted him, so he makes a break for an empty office; there’s a window in there that he’ll be able to escape through, if he can only manage to break the reinforced glass. He’d need something small and sharp to concentrate the pressure. The stun knife’s hilt will break on impact—its material is made for protecting the electronics inside from overheating, not for being smashed into a solid pane of glass. Then he remembers the ring in his pocket.

 

He twists it onto his middle finger, has to use his teeth to work it over the knuckle without his left hand, but he manages, and is relieved by the heft of it, the way the diamond bulges up from his fist. It should break right through the window if he hits it hard enough, if he doesn’t hesitate. He’s coming at the window fast, and he’ll have to be careful not to let his momentum carry him straight through it—no way he’ll survive the fall that way.

 

He braces himself for the collision and sucks in a shrill breath through his teeth as his arm goes through the window. His vision flashes, turns red, and then he blinks it away and sees the red condense down into a few streaks running the full length of his arm, a few drops of it sliding down the shards of glass that still rise up from the window frame. He kicks those free of the frame until there’s a hole big enough for him to climb through, and it’s only then that he looks out at the drop before him.

 

It stills him to stony misery. It’s a long drop, and the building’s facade is smooth marble. He can see a few ledges below that he could use as stepping stones on the way down, but they’re small and spread far apart. With one of his arms still stunned by the blast, it would be near impossible to stay balanced enough to make it all the way down. And if he fell... he’d survive, maybe, but what would be left for him at the bottom of that tower? Too many broken bones to make a getaway, surely, and no one to scrape him off the pavement but security, or police, or paramedics if he was lucky. Certainly not Buddy and Vespa. He tries to ignore the sting of that betrayal, and leans through the window. No other options now; he can hear the thundering footsteps of the guards who must have heard the shattering window, the sizzle of their stun knives and blasters, and—

 

Screams as they fell to the floor, and a strangled sound of his own, as—with no other warning—a hand seizes him by the collar of his shirt and drags him back from the precipice.

 

He spins around, nearly falling into Vespa, who swears and winds an arm around his waist.

 

“Fuck, Indy, don’t scare me like that.”

 

She shouldn’t be there— _can’t_ ; she should have been twelve floors down in the museum. It’s impossible luck that she made it up here after the alarms went off, that she found him in time. But luck was what he’d been leaning on, leaning out that window, and he won’t turn it away once it’s here, only stare slack-jawed at his savior. He doesn’t have the words to explain the fear that struck through him when the alarm went off, the fear he’d been certain was her doing, so he doesn’t, and gawks until he has to stumble after her as she takes off towards a door across the room with one hand clutching his stun-blasted arm.

 

She says something as they run, but her words disappear in the reeling of Peter’s mind, and it’s all he can do to keep up with her as she sprints to the elevator. The doors are closed, the carriage surely several floors away, but Vespa draws a long pry bar from some pocket along her thigh and forces them open.

 

“Ready?” she asks.

 

“What?” Peter says, the word crossing his lips without intention nor preparation for whatever Vespa means to say in response.

 

So instead she scowls and says nothing, just holds him tight against her and leaps for the cable, somehow managing to grab it with Peter’s dead weight dragging them down. They slide down it and land with a heavy thud on top of the carriage below, and Vespa quickly retrieves a long plasma blade and slashes through the cable, sending them falling again with a horrible metallic shrieking as the elevator’s fail-safe kicks in and slows it to a stop at the first floor. Then she pulls open the ceiling hatch and drops the two of them through. Peter collapses on the floor almost before Vespa lets go of him. Thankfully, the carriage is empty, but he fumbles for the knife he managed to steal from a guard, knowing there will be more the second the doors open.

 

Vespa takes a second to breathe, shakily and deliberately slow, and as Peter pulls himself off the elevator floor she pats him on the cheek, trying to grab his attention. “You still with me?”

 

Peter nods numbly and holds his knife at the ready. Vespa slides the pry bar back into it’s holster at her thigh and grips her plasma blade in one hand, a blaster in the other. She crouches low against the wall on one side and motions Peter to the other, so that they won’t be in plain view when the doors open.

 

The doors slide apart, and two guards rush into the elevator. Vespa cuts one down with a kick to the knees, while Peter quickly drives his stun knife into the other’s gut, spins, and lets him fall to the ground. Vespa fires a shot, and a third guard outside the elevator drops, giving Vespa space to plant a knife in the first guard’s back.

 

Vespa shrouds herself in her laser-proof coat before looking out through the open doors again, and as she does, Peter hears more shots ring out, not from Vespa’s gun. He sees her eyes widen, her lips part, and then twist into a radiant smile, and peering past her, he sees why.

 

It’s a straight shot to the main door, or rather where the main door was. It’s been blown off its hinges, and standing in the empty frame, looking for all the galaxy like hellfire holding a smoking gun, is Buddy Aurinko. She always did know how to make an entrance. She spins on her heel, twirling, flashing flames, and boards a high-speed hovercycle, while Peter and Vespa rush through the last chamber of the capitol building, now emptied of guards, to make their getaway with her.

 

Vespa pushes Peter onto the hovercycle behind Buddy, then perches backwards on the rear of it. She loops one arm through Peter’s still useless stun-blasted one, and clutches a blaster with the other. He’s afraid she’ll pull the both of them off the hovercycle and onto the pavement when they take off, lets out a strangled shriek at the first pitch of motion, but miraculously she keeps her balance, leaning heavily against Peter’s back and clutching his arm tight enough to send a strange sparking pain through his deadened nerves.

 

There are police sirens in the distance. Peter can’t see anything, eyes squeezed shut and face pressed against the plane of Buddy’s back, but as the sirens get closer he can hear a few shots fired from Vespa’s gun.

 

“How are we looking, darling?” Buddy calls back over the rushing wind around them.

 

“Three behind us, one above,” Vespa says. “Gonna need you to step up the speed once I take this next shot. If I can shoot one out of the sky it might hold the others back for a bit.”

 

“Consider it done, then.”

 

Another blast of laser fire, and then a violent burst of speed, though the sound of the cop car crashing into the ground still explodes over the rushing wind in his ears.

 

“ _Got it,”_ Vespa cries triumphantly. “The others will find another route to cut us off, though. We’ve gotta lose them before they can catch up.”

 

“I’ll have the cloaking on in just a second,” Buddy says, and sure enough, Peter can soon see the telltale flickering of light-deflecting shields forming around them. Buddy takes them off the busy city streets, through alleys and toward backroads, out of sight of all the people, and away from the sound of sirens.

 

They abandon the hovercycle just outside the city limits, for a weary-looking car that limps along the backroads for the rest of the hour’s drive to the lakehouse. Buddy drives. Peter expects Vespa to take shotgun, but instead she slips into the backseat with him, and takes him by his right arm. He stares down at it, the sleeve in tatters, stained a deep, drying red. Numbly, he finds that the first thought that comes to him is that this was the arm he’d had clinging to Buddy’s waist all the while they’d been on the hovercycle.

 

“Buddy, I’m so sorry, I must have ruined your dress.”

 

There’s a baffled silence in the car, and then Buddy laughs. Harder than she should, really, all things considered. “Thank you, darling,” she finally says. “I needed that.”

 

Even Vespa’s glower lightens a shade, and she turns his arm over to look at the rest of the cuts and says, “It’s not too bad. Looks worse than it is. What happened to the other one?”

 

“Stun blast,” he says.

 

“Let me see?”

 

He can manage to move the arm now, at least, though it’s clumsy, and every time he does he feels static dancing along his nerves. He fumbles one-handed with the buttons of his shirt, gives up after just three, and tugs it off over his head, leaving him bare and exposed.

 

Vespa seems unperturbed, methodically pulling medical supplies from a myriad of impossible pockets on the inside of her coat. She moves in closer and wipes down all his injuries with an antiseptic, wraps bandages all up his right arm, and applies a cream to the stun burn, offering all the while some gruff reassurances and a gentle criticism of his idiocy in trying to exit through a twelfth story window. It’s lucky she found him in time.

 

No, more than lucky.

 

He’d been too relieved when the thought first crossed his mind to realize it.

 

_Impossibly_ lucky.

 

The security alert would have shut off all routes to the upper floors; the second it sounded, there would have been no way up from the museum. He’d been too relieved to be saved to guess that Vespa couldn’t have possibly been there for _him_. He runs through the twelfth story floor plan in his mind—security rooms. The offices of fourteen representatives. The Department of Planetary Defense. _What were they really here for?_

 

The pit in his stomach is a veritable black hole. He’d been such a fool, all this time, since he’d first asked Buddy that question. _What were they here to steal?_

 

He doesn’t say a word for the rest of the drive, doesn’t even try to maintain a facade of composure. It’s easily enough explained: too drained by the sleepless night, the disaster of a heist, the adrenaline rush fleeing his body at last. They won’t guess that he suspects anything. He stares out the window with numb horror at the Forsettian countryside, and prays he didn’t just damn this planet like he’d nearly damned New Kinshasa.

 

Vespa’s comforting hand against his arm feels like a manacle.


	8. Chapter 8

Buddy and Vespa say little as they make their way back to the lakehouse, but they’re barely out of the car before they’re on each other again. Buddy pulling Vespa into her arms, kissing her on the lips, on the forehead, Vespa folding easily into Buddy’s embrace, letting her face fall forward into her shoulder, steadying herself in Buddy’s arms.

 

Peter stands a few feet away, trying not to intrude, hoping to catch any hint at what’s going to happen next.

 

“Do you have it?” Buddy asks.

 

Vespa nods. She shoots a quick glance toward Peter, but he evades her eyes. “Don’t know what the guards saw, though. If they’ve guessed…”

 

“It’s alright, Vespa,” Buddy says, smoothing back Vespa’s hair. “We did what we could.”

 

“But—“

 

“It’ll be enough. We’re giving them a fighting chance; they can put an end to all of this.”

 

Peter’s pulse quickens, but he needs to stay calm until he actually knows what’s going on.

 

Buddy and Vespa pull apart, and then they’re back to business. There are arrangements to be made; Buddy calls their transport and ensures their safe escape from the planet. Vespa goes through the house, collecting their things, wiping down every surface to make sure there’ll be no trace of them.

 

Peter retreats to his own room. He takes off Rob’s clothes and sets them aside to burn, peels off his makeup, and finds something of his own to wear. Usually, fixing himself up in something elegant and expensive is a sort of comfort, making him feel put-together and at ease, but he feels out of place in his ornate apparel, in a way he hasn’t in years, maybe since the first time Mag had him dress up for a con. He looks at his reflection and sees a scrawny, filthy child playing dress-up in stolen riches. He looks away and makes quick work of stripping every remnant of himself from the room.

 

What he’s left with is a single duffel bag, sagging, sad and empty of all his discarded possessions—things that were only ever meant to be shed like an ill-fitting skin. Just a couple changes of clothes and his tools for forging passports are all he has to carry with him now, just enough to plant the seeds of someone else in the barren field of himself, once he’s dealt with the aftermath of this and razed the ground once more. He thinks of the giddy terror he’d once felt at the thought of working with Buddy and Vespa. Now he can’t muster up anything more than a dull, horrified exhaustion. There’s only one more thing to do here. He takes the knife from beneath his pillow and slips it into his pocket. The thought of using it again makes bile rise up in his throat.

 

He doesn’t go back downstairs to face them just yet. He picks at the bandages Vespa had wrapped around his forearm, faint spots of red showing beneath them. None of the glass had cut too deep, and by the time they’d gotten back to the cabin the bleeding had stopped, but it had still left him lightheaded, and even more tired than before. His left arm is recovering quickly from the stun blast, but his fingers are still numb and clumsy as they traces the edges of the bandages. The door creaks open.

 

“Stop poking at those. You don’t want me to have to redo them, do you?” Vespa says from the doorway.

 

Peter lifts his head briefly to meet the sharpness of her gaze, then drops it limply again to stare at his hands without responding. He drums his fingers against his thigh and clenches his jaw until he thinks his teeth might crack. He’s not going to cry.

 

Vespa says, a little softer, “Ship’s coming in half an hour. Come wait downstairs with us?”

 

He nods and follows her downstairs. Vespa paces about the kitchen, where Buddy is busying herself making a pot of tea, of all things to do at a time like this. She motions for him to sit down at the table, and a few moments later she’s pushing a mug into his hands.

 

“There was a fault in the virus made for the security system. I’ve spoken to the hacker we hired and made my thoughts on his mistakes quite explicit; if he has any sense at all, he’ll flee this star system and I’ll never have to spare him a thought ever again. Fortunately, we’ve still managed to fulfill our employer’s requests. You’ll be paid in full. I’m sorry to have put you through this, darling.”

 

Peter can barely stomach her kindness. He stares down into his mug of tea and nods.

 

“You should drink that,” Buddy tells him. “Put some color in your cheeks; you look dreadful.”

 

“Yes, I’m well aware, thank you,” he says, grateful that his voice doesn’t break, though his words come out colder and more cutting than he intends.

 

Buddy sits down across the table from him and puts a hand over one of his. “Our ship will take us to the nearest planet in this system, where Vespa and I will be meeting with our employer. From there, you can go anywhere you’d like. You’ll certainly have the money to, at least.”

 

Peter says nothing, and wonders if he’ll ever know the cost that will weigh on his conscience after this.

 

“Although I suppose that’s not what you’re worried about. Tell me, then.”

 

He doesn’t think it through the way he should, just blurts out his questions and curses himself for a fool. “What did you take? Are people going to get hurt because of what we did today?”

 

Buddy smiles sadly at him. “People are always going to get hurt; that’s just how the world works, dear. Life will go on.”

 

Peter pushes his chair away from the table and stands. He feels a trembling rage come over him at the ease with which she says that, freezing his veins and pricking hot behind his eyes. They’re all the same, liars and killers without the courage to see the blood on their hands, bear witness to the destruction they cause, and he’s no better. He thinks of the man he wanted to be, the naive fairytale he told himself of a heroic thief. Maybe people like that can never exist, but he can at least put a stop to this, keep himself from playing into the hands of people like Mag.

 

“And you don’t _care_ about that?” Peter says.

 

“I know where my priorities lie,” Buddy says. “What’s got you so worried? Is it that intern, Robert? Because you may well have ruined his political career, but I assure you he’s certainly not wanting for wealth and opportunity in a life like his.”

 

“I don’t care about him,” he says with venom. He’s an exceptional liar. It doesn’t matter right now. “I want to know what you stole. You _lied_. You told me you were only robbing the museum, but the virus was meant to target the security systems in the upper floors as well, _I saw it._ ”He turns to Vespa. “There’s no way you could have gotten to the twelfth floor after the alarm went off. I know you weren’t there for me. You stole something from there, just _tell me what it was_.”

 

Vespa has stopped dead in her pacing. She looks tense, ready for a fight, but defers to Buddy’s judgment. There’s a heavy pause as Buddy stares him down, contemplating him, contemplating the panic in his expression. “This isn’t about us, is it?” she asks.

 

“Of _course_ it is,” Peter snaps.

 

“No, I don’t think so.” She doesn’t know, she _can’t_ , but she can guess. “Your old partner, he betrayed you, didn’t he? Wounds of that kind leave a deeper scar than most. I promise I won’t do the same, though. You can tell me about him, you know. We can get this all sorted out.” Her tone is kind, but kindness can’t obscure the way she seeks to carve out his secrets.

 

_“Stop talking about him,”_ Peter says. His right hand curls around the handle of the knife in his pocket. Even the thought of using it makes him want to cry, but he _won’t._

 

Before Buddy can say anything more, Vespa grabs Peter by the wrist, sending the knife clattering to the floor, and pins his hand to the table. A snarl is twisting on her face, but in her eyes, where he expects to see murderous anger, she just looks wounded, as betrayed as he feels. Her other hand curls into a fist around the collar of his shirt. “Don’t you dare—”

 

Buddy raises a hand to cut her off, and a frigid silence seizes the room, or it would be silent, were Peter not trying to wrench his hand out from underneath Vespa’s with a shaky breath that turns into a sob.

 

Buddy crosses the room to stand behind Vespa. She trails a hand down her arm to her hand and gently raises it from Peter’s, wraps her other arm around Vespa’s waist and leans down to murmur in her ear, “I’m sorry, beloved. You were right; it was a foolish idea to involve him. Let me deal with this.”

 

“Okay,” Vespa says, a rough whisper, and steps aside to let Buddy stand face to face with Peter.

 

Buddy raises a hand, slowly, and sets it against his shoulder, gentler than he deserves for pulling a knife on her. He winces anyway, and his breath hitches again, and his vision is hopelessly blurred through tears, but she doesn’t pull back, only grips his shoulder sternly. “Darling,” she says. “Look at me.”

 

He keeps his eyes on the ground. She taps a finger against his jaw, urging him to look up, and when he finally does the tears spill over and trail down his cheeks.

 

“I told you all that I was willing to, and you said you were satisfied with that answer. If you weren’t prepared to grant us the same trust we gave you, with the information we were willing to supply, then you shouldn’t have agreed to work with us in the first place. You understand that, don’t you? I’ve told you the importance of trust in work like ours before.”

 

Peter shakes his head, petulant and childish, and sobs again, and sniffles, and all the hideously messy things about crying that he hasn’t done in years. Not when Mag died. Not when he _killed_ Mag. Not once since then. He clutches at his chest and thinks of the tarot card Vespa drew for him, what seems like an eternity ago.

 

Buddy lets him cry, rubs his shoulder and doesn’t say a word until he’s through. His head aches and his face is a salt-stained wreck, and the very last shred of pride he hasn’t thrown away with this display still won’t let him apologize.

 

Buddy sits him back down in his chair and passes him a napkin from the table to wipe his eyes and nose with. “Are you quite done now?”

 

“I still want an answer,” he says, voice strained.

 

“I admire your persistence,” she says. Her arms hang at her sides now. She doesn’t reach for any weapons, but he knows without looking that she has enough sheathed and holstered up her legs to stock an armory. Any threat she has ever given has only been superfluous to her reputation.

 

He doesn’t care. He holds her gaze.

 

“Oh, quit it, Bud. I’ll tell him,” Vespa says wearily.

 

Buddy shoots Vespa a worried gaze, but in the end she just says, “Very well.”

 

“You’re a smart kid, I assume you did your research before coming here. Tell me what you know about Forsetti’s moon, Glitnir,” Vespa starts.

 

Peter furrows his brow. “Not much,” he says, and his voice is still hoarse from crying. He clears his throat. “There’s— there’s a war for independence going on right now. It started with just protests against Forsetti’s governance, escalated when Forsetti sent its military to quell the rebellion and ended up killing civilians.”

 

Vespa nods. “The rebels don’t have much. Practically under siege at this point. There are smugglers bringing in weapons and supplies—a friend of mine is one of them, fought with me in the resistance years ago—but Forsetti has spies on Glitnir who have been shutting down the smuggling operations. My friend asked me if I could get any information on the spies so they could take them out. _That’s_ what we were here for. Counterintelligence.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“It’s a war, Indy. Buddy was right; people are always going to get hurt. But a lot _more_ people might’ve died if we didn’t do this. Are you really so upset about that?”

 

“No, I—“ His fears wash away and all he’s left with is the shame, that his past will never lose its hold on him. Of course they hadn’t betrayed him, and of course they weren’t conspiring some awful tragedy like Mag. But he’d been too mired in the person that is Peter Nureyev to see the situation clearly, too mired in the thing that Mag had made him and the lies Mag had told to be able to trust anyone. “God, I’m so sorry.”

 

“I should really have you tell me what the hell went wrong with your last partner, just to make this even,” Vespa says, but even as she does they both know she won’t.

 

And then, there’s a shrieking sound from outside, so loud, like the sky itself splitting open, and Peter dives underneath the table on instinctual fear alone, too worn out to summon any emotion more than that, but Buddy just says,

 

“Oh darling it’s alright; our ride is here.”


	9. Chapter 9

Buddy and Vespa greet their pilot warmly. Peter wonders if she’s Vespa’s smuggler friend, but he doesn’t ask, doesn’t say a word as they catch up, and soon they’re strapping in for atmospheric exit, their pilot in the cockpit, leaving Peter, Buddy, and Vespa together in the passengers’ cabin.

 

The exit from atmosphere, of course, is a raucous and turbulent affair, but once they’ve well and truly escaped Forsetti, and found themselves more comfortable seating arrangements, a heavy silence falls over the cabin. Peter lies back on a couch, barely held in place by the ship’s artificial gravity, too caught up in his thoughts to sleep but too tired to really think. His head aches.

 

After several long minutes lying there with his palms pressed against his eyes, he startles at a light touch against his elbow. He blinks away his exhaustion and sees Buddy standing over him, a blanket folded over one arm.

 

“You should get some sleep,” she says. “It’s a ten hour flight to the next planet in this system, and you were up all night working.”

 

He mumbles something about not being too tired, and closes his eyes. Buddy brushes his hair back from his forehead and drapes the blanket over him.

 

The night they spent in Rob’s apartment feels like it was years ago, and that’s another thought to weigh him down—Rob. He wonders if he’s okay. Of course he isn’t. He’d been drugged and robbed and used as a disguise for a crime; he’d learn part of the story from his coworkers tomorrow, maybe tonight if they call to check on him, but he’d never know it all, and if he were to learn… If he ever found out about Indigo Viceroy, or worse, about Peter Nureyev, surely he’d have only hate for him. He’d be right to.

 

He wonders about the camera on Rob’s coat. It’s probably still broadcasting its feed to his comms. He could check, to soothe his conscience, maybe. He thinks if he did, though, this pit in his heart would only grow deeper.

 

He promises himself he’ll forget Rob and forget Indigo Viceroy. He’ll put away the daydreams that once plagued him of a life on Forsetti; the wistful joy they once had will have turned to a rotting bitterness. He wishes he could forget Peter Nureyev, too, but all he can do is bury him and hope he doesn’t claw himself out of his grave again.

 

*

 

Vespa shakes him awake as they’re preparing to enter the atmosphere of another planet. Peter doesn’t remember the name of it. He doesn’t intend to stay.

 

They call him a cab to send him to the nearest spaceport once they land. Still bleary-eyed and ashamed, he dreads the formalities of saying goodbye. Buddy wants to wire him his payment for the job first, but he declines.

 

“I can’t imagine the revolution is well-funded,” he says. “If this is your smuggler friend’s money, she can keep it.”

 

“Your heart’s too soft for this kind of work,” Buddy tells him. “We took the job for free. It’s my money.”

 

He means to argue but sees in her eyes that she won’t take no for an answer, so he takes the money, and takes the other parting gift she offers, a long canister of the kind one might use to smuggle paintings. When his cab arrives, she bids him farewell with a kiss on the cheek. Vespa pulls him into a crushing embrace.

 

“Look after yourself,” she says gruffly as she pulls away.

 

“I will,” he says. As he gets in the car, he thinks he sees her wipe a tear from her eye. He stares out the window until they disappear from view.

 

*

 

He takes the first shuttle out of the star system, a two-week flight to Saturn. The accommodations are hardly ideal, but he wants to distance himself from this job as fast as possible, so he’ll swallow his discomfort and accept the coffin-like bunk in a room shared with seven strangers.

 

In the dark enclosure of his bunk, he finally opens the canister, holding a small penlight he’d found in someone’s purse between his teeth. As he guessed, it holds several paintings Buddy has stolen on her trip through the museum. He examines them, one by one, and realizes that each painting in the canister is one that had been on his list of possible targets for the heist the one she’d seen on the back of the museum map, the second night he’d spent at the lakehouse.

 

She’s been thinking of him, while she robbed the museum. It stings to know that he had needlessly marred their friendship, their trust. That she had cared for him, and he had poured gasoline over that bridge and held a match alight over it, and for what? Memories of the dead, a deranged old man and a naive child.

 

The last thing he pulls out of the canister is smaller, not canvas, but a little scrap of paper. It reads: _Good luck out there, darling._

 

The message is the thing that takes up the least amount of space on the paper, written in a tight, cursive scrawl. Overshadowing it are two signatures—one in the same black ink as the message, with large, looping letters, and the other a jagged green swath of ink cutting into the other signature in places, all sharp lines, as if it had been carved into the page with a knife. Buddy and Vespa. Vespa and Buddy. It’s their autograph, he realizes, and he almost laughs, and he feels tears prick his eyes again.

 

Turning the paper over, he finds one more thing written on the back. Comms coordinates.

 

It had to have been written before the heist. He looks at the burner comms Buddy had given him, with her number programed into it. Of course she knew he would have to get rid of it after this job, so she’d given him another way to reach her. Had she hoped he’d stay in touch? That they might work together again? Or was it a lifeline, if he got himself into trouble he couldn’t get out of? He remembers the chilling question Vespa had asked him, the first time they’d met. _Who’s going to come looking for you?_ And his response, _No one._

 

He doesn’t let himself hope.

 

He’s about to remove the memory card from the burner comms when it buzzes with a message, and opening it he finds a picture from Buddy, one of herself and Vespa, grinning at the camera, and the words, _thank you._ He thinks about saving it. He has an overwhelming desire to keep the comms, save the picture, tuck it into the corner of his suitcase. Keep it hidden, carefully guarded. He’ll take it out, when he feels alone, and think about these few weeks they shared. Think about calling. He never will, but he’ll know that he can. He thinks about being the kind of person who can hold onto pieces of his past.

 

Instead he messages back, _It was an honor to work with you,_ waits for it to go through, then rips out the comms’ memory card and crushes it in his palm.

 

He’ll fence the paintings they gave him. That, and the money they paid him for the heist, will give him the start he needs to do better. He’ll make himself a new alias, and another, and another, and burn all of them, become a thief without any name at all. He’ll run across the stars, never stop for a second, never leave any trace of himself behind. No one will know him, but they’ll know what he’s done.

 

He’ll leave the past behind entirely, start anew, this time for real.

 

*

 

He keeps the note with their autographs.


End file.
